Winter's Heart
by glamaphonic
Summary: In the wake of a treaty, Prince Loki of Jotunheimr travels to Asgard for the first time, where he meets the woman warrior-in-training, Sif. The volatile and intense bond stuck between them will alter the relationship between the two realms forever. AU.
1. prologue

**Author's Note:** This was written for this year's Het Big Bang challenge. This fic absolutely would not exist if not for my dearest Mem. Not only did she inspire me towards the premise int he first place, but she then did triple duty as my sounding board, my beta, and my indefatigable cheerleader. More than anything else, this Sif/Loki novel is for her.

This is based on the movie canon with a sprinkling of the myths and an even smaller dash of the comics. Mostly, I'm just making shit up. Of particular note, I took many liberties with the jotnar since in the film they don't really make any sense. Or to put it another way: they're built to be monsters, not to have a perceivably coherent, functioning society or culture. Which just so happens to be one of the main things I'm examining and deconstructing in this fic, thus it was important to make them... exist. So, as far as any glaring inconsistencies with regard to the jotnar presented in the movie: yeah, I know.

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><p><strong>prologue.<strong>

Not for the first time, Asgard went to war.

The Bifröst opened and the Æsir spilled out onto man's world so that the people of Midgard need no longer cower and shiver at the power of the Jötnar.

Heimdall stood on the bridge and watched. His post — Asgard's vanguard, their first defense — was more important even than the contributions he could make in battle. The forces of Asgard pushed and the Jötnar, outnumbered, fell back. They had made their way through the cosmos along Yggdrasill's limbs without the blessing of Odin Allfather. But their journey was difficult and unforgiving. It was unnatural for them to walk these paths; many fell along the way. Mortals still could not hope to challenge them, but Asgard ruled the Bifröst and through the Bifröst the Nine Realms. At the Allfather's word, at Heimdall's thought, the cosmos was open to the Æsir in all its vulnerability, open to accept their protection.

Laufey, king, resisted their routing as he always had their protection, as his father had before him, as his great grandmother had in the last war. Niflkist burned bright in his hands. He froze great swaths of Æsir like statues where they stood, but the terrible casket's true power was in Jötunheimr, was over Jötunheimr, and the Allfather was universal.

The Jötnar retreated, mankind supplicated, and the Æsir gave chase.

The Bifröst plucked them up, then set them down again, and Asgard spilled out once more, like searing sunlight betwixt curtains thrown back, onto the icy peaks and plains of Jötunheimr. Heimdall gazed, steady.

Odin sundered the gates of Utgarde and the Jötnar, still injured, scrambled before the force of Asgard. The men and women of ice — of cold hearts and cold blood — were brutal and vicious and never weak. Æsir blood colored the frost along with theirs as Odin marched through their fortress city, cut it open like a felled stag and rummaged for its heart.

In the temple at Utgarde's center, after all the guards had fallen, Odin came upon Niflkist and took it up. Jötunheimr wailed; its foundations cracked. Jötunheimr heaved around him.

In a corner, cocooned in furs, a child, tiny and soft, stirred but did not cry. Heimdall saw. Odin, less one eye — taken by Farbauti when Odin looked to slay her husband, before he left him dull and defeated instead — did not. Possibility flickered in the corner of Heimdall's eye, a path forked. Odin turned on his heel and walked away. Heimdall blinked; his vision cleared. He was no Norn to think of things that were not and would not be.

The armies of Asgard returned from crumbling Utgarde triumphant, the Bifröst lifting them away from the screech and snap of Jötunheimr shifting beneath their feet. Niflkist, styled the Casket of Ancient Winters, perched in a place of honor in Odin's vault, its glow dim, its power roiling. And at the last of the feasts, absent distraction, Odin at last presented his heir: a squalling babe in Frigg's arms, ruddy and golden in equal measures.

Asgard burned even brighter, rejoiced even more loudly in this new prosperity, and the voices of the Æsir filled the heavens.

In the distance, Jötunheimr quivered, creaked as if with deathly illness, and Heimdall turned his gaze away.


	2. blush of spring i

**blush of spring.**

_i._

Sif's scalp hurt. The ribbons woven into her hair pulled and the twinned braids trailing on her shoulders were very tight. She felt like the skin at her brow was hiked up, rendering her expression perpetually surprised. Her father had said it was not so and chastised her not to complain where anyone could hear.

It was far from her first visit to the Allfather's palace, but Stigandr acted as if every time was more important than the last. Auda from across the road had done Sif's hair as she had on all previous occasions, then rubbed Sif's shoulders and wished her luck, as if she was going off into battle. If only that were so. The battlefield, as Sif imagined it, was a place of total equanimity, where who she was or was not, whether others approved or did not, didn't matter.

On previous occasions, Sif had gone to the palace, been presented, and then been left to play with the prince. Thor was an all right sort, as boys went, and Sif did actually like him very much. He was cheerful and energetic, always up for a game or a fight. He was also a poor loser, but never mean-spirited, so his irritation at her pinning him thrice in a row or being superior with a slingshot burned brightly and was short-lived. And while she ran through the gardens and dirtied her dresses, mussed her hair, and scraped her knees as she would never have been allowed at any other time, her father visited the court. He sat in the golden halls and ate and drank and told stories of her mother. Always of her mother, Sif knew, because if not for her mother, Stigandr the boatswain's son, Stigandr who would have been a fisherman, Stigandr and his gangly daughter would never have warranted such privileges.

Today, however, today while Stigandr retold his scant few tales and invented others when his words would run dry, Sif was to see the queen.

She had met Frigg before, of course. Sif had even spoken to her briefly on some occasions, when Frigg came into the gardens or near the practice yard to visit with her son. She was kind, but she was also the queen. She eyed Sif, her expression unreadable, and Sif had few hopes that whatever standard to which she was being held could ever be met. For all people thought of her mother ancient and mysterious, for all they thought of her brother standing tall at the edge of the world, she was only Sif.

Up the great steps and past the gate into Odin Allfather's palace marched Stigandr and Sif Stígandsdottir. He held her hand. This was less, Sif felt, for comfort and more to keep her from fleeing. Not that she would, but her father was always nervous for how she might behave. Their fates were tied together; if one was unwelcome so too would be the other. He relinquished her to a maidservant arrived to escort her with a final command.

"Be good," he said and clenched her shoulder.

The maidservant smiled at Sif and let her walk beside as they descended deeper into the palace, instead of leading her along like a baby. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous halls as they moved further away from rooms frequented by anyone but the royal family. Finally, at a large door engraved with a relief of sun and flowers, the maidservant bid Sif wait and disappeared inside.

She left the door ajar and Sif could see inside. A sitting room. Light from an unseen window dappled a small table near the center. Sif could not see the queen from her position and she did not dare lean forward into the room or crane her neck, but the maidservant carefully arranged porcelain on the table, presumably at the queen's command.

Sif shifted on her feet; she locked her knees then unlocked them again. This part of the palace was not so open as the southern part, which looked directly out on all of Asgard, where there was often nothing but huge pillars between those within the palace and those without. Here the halls closed at the ends, granting privacy and Sif felt acutely, cutting one off from the outside world. In the public parts of the palace, Sif could see her own home, tucked to the east on the other side of the reservoir.

The Allfather's palace was another realm entirely, one where the grace of a prince's fleeting attention could deliver her from her father's strict adherence to the mundanities of etiquette. One where the shame of a queen's disapproval could easily see her cast out.

Sif petted the end of one of her braids, hand clenching.

Finally, the maid returned and waved her into the room, then left, closing the door behind her. Frigg sat at the table carefully pouring herself a cup of tea.

"Sif," Frigg said, smiling as if it were a delight simply to see her, "come, sit."

Sif obeyed. She crossed the room and slid into the chair opposite the queen. Frigg raised the kettle again and poured Sif's tea, her slender hands graceful and steady. Her dress was a brilliant blue that very nearly matched her eyes, and flaxen curls tumbled over one shoulder just so. Sif felt knobby and awkward. She crossed her feet at her ankles and her knees knocked together beneath her skirt.

"How are you, dear?" Frigg asked and took a sip of tea.

Sif did so as well. It was spicy and strong and she could feel the heat of it down her throat and in her chest.

"Well, my lady," she replied, by rote.

"I see," Frigg said, still smiling. "You visited three days ago, did you not?"

Sif froze, wary, and thought of the sharp sting of her father's disapproval. She _had_ been there three days ago. She had also socked Thor in the mouth and given him a fat lip, for which transgression she'd thought herself free of punishment. Thor had declared it a good clean hit as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and they'd spoke no more of it, except when Sif instructed him on how she twisted her hips into the punch to give it more bite. When she considered, as she sometimes did, all the reasons the queen might see her barred from the palace — might leave her to her home with just her and her father far away from the simple freedoms she enjoyed when her playmate was the prince and her father would let her do anything the prince did just to ensure she stayed in his good graces — they were all based in her inherent unsuitability. She had not thought Thor would ever rat her out.

"I did," she said finally for there was no use trying to hide it.

"I thought so." Frigg did not seem angry. In fact, she reached across the table and patted Sif's hand where it rested near her teacup. "My son is quite fond of you."

And though she already knew it — Thor was not very good at concealing his feelings and he very rarely tried — still a warmth bloomed in Sif's belly. She thought them friends; it was good to know for certain that it was so.

"I like him very much," Sif said with great conviction.

"Oh, well, I'm glad," Frigg replied, laughter in her eyes. "I must admit, though, I did not bring you here to speak of Thor."

Sif's brow knit; her braids pulled again at her scalp. While she had not known the specifics — her father certainly had ideas that made her want to gag to think of them — she was certain that Frigg's interest in her had to be related to Thor in some way. Sif considered, then charged forward.

"Why then, my lady? I'm of little interest," she said.

"Oh, I'm afraid I disagree there," Frigg said and let it hang in the air. She sipped her tea and Sif mimicked her. Moments passed before the queen spoke again. "Do excuse me if I pry, but do you remember much about your mother?"

No one ever asked her that. People, Sif had learned very early despite what efforts were made to protect her youthful innocence, liked ribald stories and wild adventures and scandalous dealings. Her father, obviously, was the one for those. Sif was merely the unexceptional proof of an exceptional conquest, nothing more.

"I know that she is Unnr," Sif said. "Daughter of Rán, fathered by the sea, one of the nine mothers of Heimdall the All-Seeing. But, no, I do not remember her."

She remembered cool hands and salt in the breeze. She remembered her father's many renditions of the day his love came to him and delivered a child just past infancy, his daughter, into his arms. She remembered a kiss at the corner of her mouth that tasted of tears. But none of it was substantial and Sif was a pragmatist. Stigandr had sought Unnr again in the course of Sif's short life to little avail. If anyone truly knew where she and her sisters kept themselves or how to call them forth it was but Heimdall, and it was not in his nature to be forthcoming about anything.

"I only ask," Frigg said gently, "Because I wish for you to understand the context of what I am about to say. Your mother and her sisters are special. They possess great power and insight, which they passed on to your half-brother so very long ago-"

Frigg's appraising looks took on new meaning. Things shifted wildly in Sif's mind.

"And you think- you think they may have passed it to me as well?" Sif's shock was such that not only did she interrupt the queen, but she could not bring herself to worry over the fact that she had.

Frigg did not seem to mind.

"I have some… scant talents of my own." Sif thought of the way people spoke of Frigg, whom they said always knew more than she told, who could see things to which even the Allfather was blind. And what did she see in Sif? What could she possibly see? Sif stared down at the table, heart in her throat. Her world was small; the things she wanted for matched it. Should she hope? Should she be afraid? Didn't prophets see tragedy just as often as greatness? What could there be for Sif in either case?

"And I think," the queen continued and, with her fingers, tipped Sif's chin up to meet her eyes. Her steady gaze halted Sif's rushing thoughts. "That you are a very singular girl and I would like to know you better."

"Is that all?" Sif asked because it seemed so little. It occurred to her to wonder if her father would be disappointed. She had expected worse, but he — as always — had expected better. Better certainly than for things to remain largely unchanged; she brushed the thought away.

"That's all." Frigg patted her hand again, then took another sip of her tea. "You won't mind sitting and talking to me now and again? When you're not busy trouncing my son, of course."

Sif could only nod, which seemed more than sufficient for the queen, who smiled.

"Don't tell him I said that, though," she said. "He's very proud."

"So what did she want?" asked Thor, once Sif had climbed from the depths of the palace and found herself in the gardens again. He peered past his own mussed blond hair, then arched his back in an attempt to dislodge Sif as she sat upon it.

She'd use her superior height to over-leverage him. He was growing thick about the shoulders, but that did him little good if she didn't approach directly.

"Nothing," Sif said and pushed his cheek back into the dirt. "To talk of how my father fucked a wave maiden."

Below her, Thor's back spasmed as he guffawed in delight at her profanity. Then, he bucked again, as with new strength, and Sif slipped just enough for him to dump her off and scramble away. She lay on her back for a moment, staring up at the sky. One of her braids had come mostly unwound, the loose ends sticking up in her peripheral vision. The dirtied end of the ribbon fell against her shoulder.

"Is that really all she said?" asked Thor as he came to stand over her. His shadow fell across her face. His confused expression blotted out the sun.

"She said that I'm a very singular girl," Sif offered.

Thor snorted loudly and she threw a nearby pebble at his head, which he dodged.

"You surely fight like a demon," he said. "All you need are red jötunn eyes and they could call you Farbauti."

For this insult, Sif kicked his ankle. He yelled and clutched at it, then plopped down beside her in the dirt.

"Do you really think there's something special about me?" Sif asked at last.

Thor shrugged expansively and squinted up at the sun as if it held answers that were beyond his purview. Perhaps it did.

"If my mother said. I don't know. What do you think?"

Sif worked a finger in at the base of her remaining braid, the tie there frayed, the ribbon unfurled. Sif Stingandsdottir. Sif, daughter of Unnr. Sif, sister of Heimdall. Sif, companion of Thor. Sif, curiosity of Frigg.

Sif who wanted only to wear trousers more often, to learn to properly secure Thor in an armbar, and perhaps to shoot a bow or wield a blade.

"I think it doesn't matter," she said, and willed herself to believe it.


	3. blush of spring ii

_ii._

Old Utgarde was a treacherous place, or so most claimed. Loki was of the strong opinion that they only felt that way because they did not bother to go there. Oh, certainly most of the adults he knew — his lord father and lady mother, included — had lived there once, before the wall fell and the spires cracked and the Æsir defouled it, but no one really left Gastropnir anymore, not to go so far as the lost city. No one except Loki and, as such, he did not see why he should be expected to take others' words over his own experience.

He was very young, but he was not stupid. He had run the length of the ruined city many times, just as he did now, and not come to harm. Were he less swift and less clever that might not have been the case, but he was, so there was little reason to worry over other possibilities.

His parents didn't agree, which was unfortunate since it meant that Loki was thus forced not to tell them about it. He didn't enjoy keeping secrets from them, but really they'd left him little choice.

He'd finished his lessons and as the others filtered themselves into smaller groups and pockets to go the Outyards to watch the bouts or play games in the great hall, Loki excused himself to his room. It was of little concern to most — and Brynja made quite clear her particular lack of interest — but he didn't need them to care, only to know. Then to his room he went and pulled boots on over his hose, draped and tied his tunic, and settled his thick, fur cloak about his shoulders.

He looked to the fire, burning, and thought _quiet, small _and the shadows in the room rose. He threw his hands out towards them and tried to weave them — two times, three times, four times, five — and at last they obeyed. They surrounded him. Then Loki slipped from his room and avoided the light as he darted through the corridors of the keep, thinking loudly at all he encountered _don't look here, don't look here_; and they did not look.

Utgarde sprawled before him. He sidestepped deftly to avoid a crack in the ground that would soon become a fissure, his weight on the balls of his feet. The flexible soles of his heavily furred boots were just beginning to be broken in properly. He could feel the ice shifting beneath his toes without having to look at it at all. Of course, recently this milestone had usually meant that he would soon outgrow the boots and need them replaced. Oh how quickly he grew, Farbauti would say. Oh how very little difference it made, everyone else would say.

Three great columns, their facades chipped and cloudy, dwarfed him. The remains of the old temple were one of the few standing structures left in Utgarde. It had been of great interest to Loki once; less for the stories the sages told of how he, himself, had been hidden there during the siege or how the tyrant Odin stole Niflkist from its perch therein, and more for the treasures it held. He had dug out spell crystals from cramped nooks, cracked but salvageable, and rescued brittle old scrolls that required handling so careful that few touches but his were light and delicate enough not to shatter them. Some of it he even gave to his teachers — though if he hoped it would encourage them to accelerate his instruction beyond that of others his age, it was in vain.

When he presented his findings — which he claimed to have discovered buried just beyond the Outyards, right past the edge of where he was allowed to travel alone — his father clapped him on the shoulder and congratulated him on doing so much, so soon to strengthen Jötunheimr, to return things that they'd all thought lost to them. Laufey's eyes were shrewd, though, and Loki thought perhaps his father knew where he'd actually been. In any case, king or no, he would not interfere with what the sages thought the best methods of instruction were.

Fundamentals, they moaned, the fundamentals of sorcery must be mastered. When Loki pointed out that he had actually mastered the basic battle magic they drilled into him and his peers — and he had — they had one of the other children, all taller, all stronger, push him down in a few bouts. His arguments that being able to execute the magic and being able to actually defeat people with it were different skill sets tended to fall on deaf ears.

He had other talents and other interests. Was it so wrong to want to pursue them in his own time, at his own pace? Though, the things he secreted away in his room, he could admit, were a bit beyond his ken — items of deeper magic than blades and armor of ice and more complex than the charms that fooled senses that he had painstakingly taught himself to work. But that was the point. If he studied them long enough, he'd understand them. More quickly if properly guided.

He kept on past the temple, sure-footed, and did not even let his eyes stray in a rote check for something of interest. That particular area had been picked clean some time before and now it only signified that he'd come most of the way towards the farther reaches he'd begun to travel once Utgarde lost its adventure. There were still many things to be found there, but that took more time than Loki had today — and more patience than he had to wait for results.

The forest always came into view first. The maze of jagged black ice that was Utgarde gave way to the tundra, which in turn gave way to the great Iron-wood and its trees that seemed tall as the mountains curving about the edges of Jötunheimr. The little house sat at the forest's edge, dark wood and dark ice molded into its shape. The last bit of distance was often the only trying part of the journey. Between the dead air of dead Utgarde and the cover of Jarnvid's trees, the winds across the thin stretch of tundra — just a corner of what curved away west towards the mountains — could be harsh. In early days of winter, before the way became entirely impassible, it could drive sleet through the air with force such that it would cut your exposed skin if you were foolish enough not to turn away.

But today, winter was a long ways off and the wind was brisk, but dry. Loki turned up the hood of his cloak anyway. It pressed his dark curls against his ears, the fur tickling his cheeks. The tip of his nose was cold and he deliberately refused to think of what his mother would say.

At the door, he knocked only once, knuckles cracking so sharply against the wood that he only just resisted the impulse to put them in his mouth to sooth them. The door opened just a bit. Not enough for most to get in, but enough for Loki.

"Well, come on then," said an impatient voice.

Loki acquiesced and slipped through the space.

Inside, a fuel-less fire burned in shades of bright green and blue in the hearth and in the sconces along the walls.

Skadi stood, one hand on her hip just below where she'd cinched her dress at her waist, and peered down at Loki. When last they'd met a bandage had been wrapped tight around her brow — souvenir from her scheduled trip to the sages — but now it was gone, and he could see very clearly the way her brow knit in displeasure. Just above it, in the center of her forehead, a sweeping curve followed the contour of her hairline and at its center lay another another sharp line that forked just above her eyebrows. The scars were still fresh, a raw indigo, but they would settle beautifully.

Loki wrinkled his nose.

"Is that a new outfit, Skadi?" he asked, voice sweet as honey. He had seen her wear it many times, the cloth draping just so over one shoulder, and if the tools on the table near the hearth and the fresh stitches along the hem were any indication, she had just finished mending it. "You should wear it when next you come to see us all. Ívarrr asked after you, you know."

Skadi swatted at him and Loki ducked, then weaved away, grinning. She rarely came to Gastropnir, moreso only than her father who never came at all. But while people still tended to lower their voices when speaking of such things in Loki's presence, he knew very well what a youth's first adornment signified and what Skadi's obvious pride in hers said besides. Loki's face was still smooth, his skin untouched, and frankly he had little interest in the entire affair. Still, he knew that if Skadi intended to get on with… it, she'd have to go where there were actually other people more than once every few seasons.

"Hold your forked tongue," Skadi said with a disdainful sniff and toss of her silver hair over her shoulder. Skadi was not much older than Loki, but the top of his head came barely to her chest and the breadth of his shoulders only just outmeasured her waist, so she quite enjoyed acting as if he were a small child and she as ancient as the stars.

"You're very cruel to people who give you compliments," Loki replied. He doffed his cloak and laid it on a chair near the door, then primly adjusted his tunic about his shoulders. Were he at home, he might have doffed that as well, but Skadi and her father did not keep their home quite so warm as the royals' chambers in Gastropnir.

"And you are a very snide little boy," Skadi replied, sitting back at the table and beginning to put her sewing things away.

"He isn't especially talkative today," she said then, eyes darting towards the closed door to the adjacent room. "But I know that won't give you pause seeing as you talk enough for two and more." A dismissal.

"And you haven't brains enough for one," Loki said, but it was only half-hearted. His thoughts were in the next room, carefully weighing how fruitful his visit might be. Weighing and hoping. He strode towards the door and passed through it into the next room.

"If you stay until nightfall, you're only getting a half portion of stew. I don't care how skinny you are!" came Skadi's voice as he closed the door behind him.

The room was dim and even so Loki's eyes still raked greedily along the shelves that lined the walls. They were filled with neatly arranged scroll cannisters and here and there small crystals pulsing lazily — the spells and knowledge they held within at rest. They were none of them artifacts. Not a bit of it predated the last war since, of course, if it had his father's soldiers would have claimed it, and rightfully so. No, it had all been made and recorded by Skadi's father in Loki's lifetime. All that Thjazi had of value anymore was not found within his possessions, but within his mind. Though, prying it from that particular trap was a feat that required a certain degree of insistence. Even then you didn't always get what you wanted.

There had been good days, great days, when Loki had actually been allowed to touch, to read, to learn only to find entire scrolls of what seemed little more than gibberish, no form or rhyme or reason, nothing of which he could make sense, and not because it was too advanced for him. He learned quickly that if he pointed that out in an attempt to acquire one of the intelligible works, Thjazi would yell that he was not ready and bar him entirely.

He sat now, at the desk in the corner, and did not look up at Loki. His overgrown hair — all white, having long ago lost the silver sheen of his daughter's — hung down like a ragged curtain over whatever he was writing. He no longer bothered to shave it, so it grew out in patches and hanks, interrupted by the many warrior's adornments traced into his scalp.

"Greetings, most esteemed teacher," Loki said, as if he spoke to one of the sages back at Gastropnir. Most of their ilk had been killed in the war and those who had been students were forced into the positions of masters. (What use robbing Jötunheimr of its library and repository if the sorcerers who knew what they held still lived, Laufey would say or the like, some time after the initial topic had been lost whenever Loki complained of his teachers.) Thjazi was older than all of them, to the one. Older, Loki suspected, than most of them combined.

Still, Thjazi ignored him. They would not dare to.

It likely would not be a good day. _Mad, old Thjazi_, thought Loki, frustrated. He had come a long way.

"I commanded the shadows today," Loki said. "On the first try." For sometimes Thjazi could be steered thus, drawn in by tales of accomplishment. He had not been a teacher in a very long time, but some of the reflexes were still there.

Thjazi grunted and still did not turn, but he said: "What do you want, boy?"

Loki grinned, triumphant. He folded his hands neatly in front of him, though he knew Thjazi could not see.

"Nothing more than your wisdom, teacher," Loki said smoothly.

Frowning, Thjazi brutally scratched out what seemed a large section of his writing.

"Do the whelps in your keep have so little wisdom for you that you must come to beg magic tricks from me?"

Loki bristled. He shifted on his feet, standing straighter, drawing up his full height. He was the prince of all Jötunheimr, to be beggared by no one.

"I ask a boon, in service to the realm," Loki said stiffly and without thought, then clamped his mouth shut. Stupid, stupid. Command rarely had positive effect on Thjazi.

At last, Thjazi faced him, eyes flashing crimson in the low light. Even sitting, he still towered over Loki.

"And what does a babe such as you know of service? Service is loss. It is sacrifice. You have given up nothing in your short little life because you have nothing yet to give." His voice boomed. Loki willed himself still. "Do not use words you don't understand!"

One traitorous foot, the left, took a single step backwards. Loki did not call the shadows; he beat back the charms bubbling on the surface of his thoughts. They would not work anyway. He'd dashed through Gastropnir and limbs peeked through the shadows, his control imperfect. He was not so skilled as he pretended. Thjazi knew all that he knew.

Then, suddenly, Thjazi laughed. It was hearty and his smile changed the lines of his face. It made it look less ragged and worn. For just a moment, Loki thought he could see the man Skadi had spoken of just once, wistful. The man she'd known before the war, when she'd had not only a father, but a mother and a brother as well.

"Long live Laufey," Thjazi declared. "For his son will make a poor king."

Loki gaped, caught between confusion and dire insult. His mouth worked.

"What- I am- I will be-" he tried.

"The air around you hums with charms," Thjazi said. "You feel threatened and you turn to illusion. Where is your blade, boy? Where is your armor? I know they've taught you to conjure them by now."

At this, Loki again found his voice.

"What sort of king is made by being trampled, fighting battles he cannot win?" His voiced raised, shrill to his own ears. "A fool."

Thjazi shook his head. "And what good a wise king that his people do not respect? And how wise, indeed, if he does not respect his people? If he respects only himself, thinks only of what he wants and loves and not what others need of him."

Loki thought of his father, who listened to him rail and watched his failures and would not interfere.

"You are their tiny princeling and so they will _let_ you do whatever you want, but that will not stop them expecting things from you."

Loki breathed heavily into the ensuing silence, his ire up but no retort formed in his mind through which to release it. _Mad, old Thjazi_, he thought bitterly.

Thjazi turned back to his work and grunted with meaning Loki could not decipher.

"Take that," Thjazi said then. He pointed at a particular scroll on a nearby shelf.

Irritation and umbrage not forgotten, but no longer important, Loki rushed for it and lifted it carefully from its perch. He uncapped it and unrolled it just slightly and breathed out in relief to see words he could actually understand.

_On the Nature of Concurrent Spaces_ the heading read.

"If you wish to run," said Thjazi, "at least learn to run far and fast."

Loki clenched his jaw, angry words rolling on his tongue, but, considering his options, sat down instead to read.


	4. blush of spring iii

_iii._

Thor's weight bore down on Sif, and she sighed.

"Shove over," she hissed and elbowed him in the ribs.

He grunted, low in his throat, but the pressure eased as he readjusted himself in their hiding place. Sif rolled her shoulders, working the spot where the buckle on one of his armbands had been stabbing her in the back. The round of hedges near the parade grounds had been a far more suitable hiding place when they were children, before Thor started to become mountainous, back when Sif's limbs, though gangly, had not yet become long.

Still they peered out of the leafy enclosure like children. Their eyes were wide and hungry as they watched the forces of the Æsir gather to march out through the Allfather's palace and off across the rainbow bridge. The ranks of the common soldiers were sharp and disciplined, their matching golden armor gleaming. But it was the warriors who milled together at the head of the procession, their attire as varied as their many achievements, who garnered the lion's share of Sif and Thor's attention. In this, amongst many other things, Sif knew Thor as well as she knew herself. He longed, as she did, for nothing less than to be among their ranks.

They'd been denied this time of course. Too young, untested, was the battlemaster's verdict. Thor had raged for the better part of two days, but Sif had kept her disappointment close. This denial was a small setback, hardly worth the mentioning. A 'later' carried much less sting when you were in the position to be fully cognizant that it could have been a 'never.' It had been so many seasons since Sif began to train in earnest, since she first held a sword in her hand and _knew_. But it had been significantly fewer since her peers — barring Thor who considered her his comrade since that first day she came to the palace and would never be moved to reconsider it — and instructors and even on-lookers had begun to accept the truth of her intentions.

The forces of Asgard acted to curtail the ambitions of the troll princes of Svartálfaheimr. They plotted deep within their forests, sought to ally with their kind throughout the other realms, and to march through, laying waste to each in turn until they reached Asgard. Heimdall had seen. Heimdall had heard. So, Asgard moved. Sif could observe as well, if not in her brother's way; she knew what was expected. It could be a quick and simple routing or it could explode into a war. If there was to be war, then many more battles would come and, eventually, she and Thor would be called.

"He's not so much older than us," Thor groused. Sif only just managed to crane her head out of the path of his forearm as he gestured.

The object of her friend's ire was a man with carefully coiffed hair and a similarly carefully kept moustache and goatee. Fandral was his name, Sif knew, though less for his public deeds and more for the way the ladies of the court spoke of him. He was among the most recent to take his oaths, his favor earned on an outing with mighty Volstagg and quiet, dangerous Hogun. Sif said so.

"We could have done the same, better if given chance!" Thor said.

"Of course we could have," Sif agreed. "But whining about it won't change anything."

Thor harrumphed, insulted, and Sif elbowed him again for being too loud. Silence had fallen among the troops, even the low hum of background commotion dimming to nothing. The ranks pulled themselves taller, stood even straighter, as Odin came forth. He sat astride Slepnir and his great horned and winged helm cast a fearsome shadow on his men. The sun lay directly at his back as if he had commanded it — and perhaps he had.

The warriors first folded their arms to their chests in salute, bent their heads in respect, and kneeled in obeisance. The rank and file followed and row by row by row Asgard's finest, the finest of all the realms, bowed before their king and awaited his word.

Odin spoke.

"It has been some time since there was need to gather you all here like this, but it is never long enough. Once again, the nine realms are threatened," he growled. "Once again, it falls to Asgard to maintain that which it bestowed upon the cosmos and has guarded jealously for generations.

"It is not only the duty of the Æsir, it is our privilege to protect the weak, to demand honor and civility from the savage, to bring peace to all." Slepnir paced right, then left again. "We ride to mete out swift justice, to cleave the head of the viper before it can poison our heel. So that we do not need to ride again."

"Forward!" yelled Odin and at the end of each unit, another man echoed his call.

Again, row by row, the army of Æsir moved, rising like a cresting wave. The Allfather brought Slepnir about and Sif held her breath, waiting for the march to begin. Then Odin paused and deliberately turned his head. His one eye fell on their hiding place for a single piercing moment, then just as quickly he turned away. Sif started in shock at this regard, shuffling farther away from the peephole, and Thor fell back onto his bottom, his crouch precarious and dependent on Sif's stillness.

Beyond them, the march began.

When the last of the soldiers had filed past, Sif and Thor extricated themselves from the clutch of the foliage, which proved only half again as difficult as getting themselves in there in the first place had been. Sif's spine and neck and shoulders all cracked. She stretched, arms raised high above her head, reaching, and Thor took the opportunity to topple her over while she was off-balance, laughing about her slowness as he raced off into the palace.

"Cheap!" she exclaimed as she caught him, barreling into his side, for Sif was, in point of fact, much faster than Thor.

"Vengeance," he countered as he stood against her attempts to bowl him over. "My side aches from your pointy elbows."

She stomped his foot for that, the insult too close to mumbled criticisms she always pretended not to hear. Skinny and sharp and hard. Broad shoulders and wasted potential. Thor would never mean it that way, which was one of the reasons she loved him so dearly, but frustrations got the better of both of them occasionally.

Thor took the stomp with barely a grunt and, in the course of her split second of distraction, managed to hook his arm about her waist and flip her over his shoulder. Her legs dangled at his front and he yelped as she pulled his hair.

That was how her father came upon them.

"My prince," said Stigandr and cleared his throat.

"Morning, sir," Thor greeted him, voice thick with cheer.

Sif slapped her hand against Thor's back and, with a start, he slid her off of his shoulder. She dropped to her feet and turned to face her father. His face was even, a neutrally pleasant expression that she knew was crafted and kept with just as much care as his rich, chestnut beard.

Thor inclined his head in respect.

"I'll see you at the training yard, Sif," he said, then retreated before the laughter he was barely restraining could burst from him. Sif rolled her eyes and vowed to make him pay for that later.

Thor's footsteps faded. Stigandr looked at Sif with an appraising eye. She watched his gaze roam over her muddy boots, her grass-stained trousers, her tunic askew, canted to one side from her struggles, her hair tangled with bits of leaves. Stigandr sighed lightly, resigned.

"Don't carry on in the halls that way," he said at last. "It's unseemly. People will be much quicker to judge you for it than him."

"Were you looking for me, father?" Sif asked, voice tight. "Did you want something?"

"Auda would like you to come home for a meal or two soon," he offered as he began to walk. Sif fell into step with him.

Home, which was no longer across the reservoir, such a place not fit for their family's rising station. Auda, who was no longer from across the road. She and Stigandr had not married, of course — and would not — for that was a much less attractive ending for the tale than him waiting on his love from the sea for all his days.

"Tell her to expect me in the next few days," Sif said and her father caught her arm when she looked to walk away.

"That is not all," said Stigandr.

Sif came to a stop. He herded her into an alcove. A bench, wrought with swirling embellishment that reminded Sif of waves, sat in front of a wide window. In the distance the mountain lake glinted in the morning sun.

"I always thought to wait a while longer before pressing this issue, but obviously with such displays my feeling that it is not too soon will bear out." He bent closer to her, conspiratorial. "You need to formalize your relationship with Thor."

Sif wrenched away from his grip.

"Father, don't be ridic-"

"No!" he exclaimed, then when it echoed through the halls, he repeated, his voice a harsh whisper: "No. No, Sif. You are not a child any longer. You don't have the luxury of covering your ears and closing your eyes. You are becoming a woman." He paused. "Or near enough to. And he is most definitely becoming a man."

His head shook, almost imperceptibly, as he stared at her and Sif's traitorous heart sank for the clear derision on his face — the disapproval.

"All of this playing with weapons and rolling around in the dirt satisfies him now, for whatever reason, but as he grows he will long for something softer, something sweeter. You need to lay your claim before that happens. Allfather knows you'll be sorely unequipped to compete once his eye starts wandering."

Sif squared her shoulders, her muscles tensed.

"Even if I had any interest in- with _Thor_- of all people- Asgard is on the brink of war, Father. And if it goes to war I _will_ be called to fight; I'll have no time to worry over

courtship and weddings."

Stigandr's laughter was choked and cruel. He sat down on the bench and stared up at her. Sif's face burned for the pity in his expression.

"Silly girl," he muttered. "Do you really think that's what this is? Your seat in the great hall, rooms in the palace, lunch with the queen, free reign to make as big a fool of yourself as you like? Do you really think this has all been in service to you dying in some far off battlefield playing at being a warrior?"

"I'm not playing!" she yelled, fury rising like bile in her throat. "I'm _good._ I'm damned good. Better than the other boys. Better than Thor. I've bested them all."

"And no one cares," Stigandr replied, careful and cold. "Frigg did not bring you here because she cares about your prowess in battle. The Allfather does not allow your presence because his son lacks for sparring partners.

"The queen brought you here for two reasons: because she hoped that your heritage would render you more than what you are, and because she thought she could make you a suitable wife for her son and a suitable mother for her grandchildren. You've failed her abysmally on the first count. For your own sake, try not to fail her on the second."

He stood and adjusted the hang of his shirt, as if the force of so much untidy emotion had upset it.

"You will make the first overture. Confess to Frigg, in confidence, the overwhelming strength of your affection for her son. She will understand what is being offered, and I will request a meeting with her three days hence to discuss specific terms."

Stigandr did not wait for Sif to voice agreement or even acknowledgment. He only reached out one large hand and cupped her cheek.

"It is for the best," he said firmly. "For all of us."

His footsteps echoed through the corridor before fading and Sif stood, trembling, her rage slowly being overridden by the doubts clawing at her insides. Her father spoke with conviction; he always did. It didn't make him right, but it didn't make him wrong either. And who could she ask, who could she look to for counsel? Not Auda, who would agree, even in her milder, well-meaning way, with Stigandr. Not Thor or Frigg around whom the problems centered.

Sif looked again out the window, across Asgard and out towards the horizon. Then, she set off towards the Bifröst.

The streets were already clearing from the earlier fanfare. Odin and his army were gone and Asgard returned to its business. An anxious pall lay over the city, still. One that would not lift until the Allfather led his troops back triumphant once again. At the base of the rainbow bridge, Sif stood alone. No one watched as she journeyed to the edge of the world.

Heimdall stood before his observatory, his expression unchanging as Sif approached, though she could see herself reflected in his golden eyes. It was useless, she knew, to wait for more greeting than that. She sat down near the entrance to the observatory instead, and dangled her feet over the edge of the abyss.

"All the realm would mourn," Heimdall said. "Were you to fall."

Sif snorted. "I doubt that. Besides, you wouldn't let me fall."

She pulled her legs back anyway, knees to her chest. Heimdall did not turn from his regard of Asgard.

"Did you come here to hide?" he asked.

"Did you see?" Sif responded.

"I am not always watching," Heimdall replied.

"That's not a 'no.'"

There was a pause before his response and Sif could not tell whether the change in his bearing was something only she would notice or something only she would imagine.

"Do you know why our mother gave you to Stigandr Liefson?" he asked.

"No," Sif said. But how many ways she had imagined it; how many times she had wondered. There were moments when she saw another life for herself so clearly that she thought perhaps her sight had finally come. It never lasted. She would not let it. What use imagining a life without toil? It did nothing to aid her in what she had to do.

"Do you wish to know?" Heimdall asked.

"No," Sif spat.

His shoulders bunched, then set again.

"Then what is it you wish to know?"

She turned to face Asgard as he did, its golden spires imposing against the horizon. Thor would consider her long overdue in the training yard. Soon, Frigg would expect her for a midday meal.

"I want to know what to do," she said.

"I cannot tell you that."

"You could," Sif protested.

"I won't," Heimdall reiterated and canted his head so his eyes fell directly on her. "Your decisions are your own."

Then, he lifted his great sword, spun on his heel, and paced into his observatory. Sif stood. She could follow, but Heimdall could be as unrelenting as she was. If nothing else, she was expected and she owed Thor and Frigg both more than avoidance.

There was no time to change before meeting the queen. In years prior, Sif would have been aghast, but Frigg had seen her in far worse condition. Still, she did pick the last of the leaves from her hair as she made her way to Frigg's sitting room.

Frigg sat at the small tea table as she so often had. Her dress today was green and her tumble of golden curls made a stark contrast. Sif entered without announcing herself, trained into it by so many years of Frigg waving away her attempts at etiquette. Today, the queen did not greet her first. Indeed, she did not seem to notice Sif at all as she sat, her expression distant.

Sif had seen her caught in the grip of her sight before, eyes sharply focused on something beyond others' perception. This was not like that. The queen's pre-occupation was mundane. Somehow, for that, it worried Sif more.

"My lady," Sif offered cautiously.

Instantly, Frigg seemed to come to herself as if nothing had ever been awry.

"Sif," she said, voice full of her normal warmth. "How are you?"

"Well, my lady." Sif took her seat and eyed the table. The tea had not yet been set to steep.

"I imagine you watched the march today with my son," Frigg said.

"I did." After a fashion, at any rate. If the queen had an inkling that Sif and Thor had eavesdropped on the Allfather's private address to his men, she gave no indication.

"I hope you were not too disappointed to be left behind."

"Thor moreso than I," Sif admitted. Then, because Frigg still had not, she reached for the pitcher of water and carefully poured it into the teapot. Frigg muttered thanks and Sif could hesitate no longer.

"I was quickly given something else to concern myself with," she said and when Frigg looked at her curiously and with such genuine concern, she knew she could not falter. "My father wished for me to speak to you."

Frigg had never given the impression that she disliked Sif's father. Not exactly. But there was something in her expression when they spoke of him, a knowing turn to her mouth, that Sif had always found comforting.

"Did he?" Frigg asked conversationally. "And what did Stigandr wish for you to say?"

Sif clenched her jaw for only a moment, hard enough to make her teeth ache.

"He wants me to profess my affection for Thor- so that you and he can arrange our betrothal."

Sif was not sure what reaction she expected to this, but Frigg's calm curiosity was far from it.

"And are you, Sif?" she asked. "Are you professing such affection for my son? Such love that you should be wed?"

"No," said Sif. "I will gladly stand at Thor's side through anything. I will be his friend for the rest of my life. But I do not want to marry him. I'm sorry."

With a flick of her wrist, Frigg waved it away as easily and carelessly as she did trappings of etiquette that she found tiresome.

"No need to apologize. I had an inkling it was the case. It doesn't offend me and if it offends my son then he'll simply need to grow a thicker skin."

"But if you knew- then- why. I am not ungrateful, far from it." She would likely never be able to express her gratitude, the depth of her appreciation for everything Frigg — and Thor — were to her. "But… I do not have my brother's talents as has been obvious for so long. I will not make Thor a wife. Why then have you extended so much to me?"

"You are a bright, spirited girl with talents all your own. You needed a patron and my son enjoys your company. Do I need more reason than that?"

To Stigandr. To the other youths. To the whole of Asgard. She did. But Sif had always hoped.

"Then it's- If I wish to prove myself and take oaths as a warrior, it will be allowed?"

"I daresay I'd like to see anyone try and stop you," Frigg said, but there was an edge to her words and Sif, for once, felt unsure whether Frigg was complimenting her. "You are so eager for it."

"I am," she said. It came forth like a challenge, but Sif would not take it back.

"Eager to ride forth with my husband. Eager to bring peace to the realms. Or its illusion."

With that, it became clear that they'd ceased really discussing Sif at all.

"My queen?" she asked, concern chasing everything else away. For what could be so awry, so wrong, that the wife of Odin would express such doubt when he had just gone off to war?

Frigg studied her and seemed to come to a decision, as she checked the tea and then began to pour it.

"You are old enough to hear it frankly," Frigg said. "Nothing is so simple as it sounds in history books. I only worry that for all Asgard has done to calm the tides of war, we have failed."

"But the armies of Asgard have never been defeated," Sif protested. "Every time we've moved we've accomplished what we wished. We bowed even Jötunheimr before us."

"A realm can bow, but still have war in its heart. Perhaps moreso even than other times." Frigg lifted her teacup, but did not drink.

"Why do you want to be a warrior, Sif?" she asked and Sif felt like the weight of her entire future rested on her answer. "Beyond your talent, beyond that vigor for battle, why?"

Sif paused, but not for long.

"To protect Asgard," she declared. "To protect all the realms, everywhere."

Frigg took a little breath. Her gaze was sharp and then, she looked away.

"I don't suppose I could ask for more than that," said Frigg, but the solemnity in her expression quite clearly told Sif that she could.


	5. blush of spring iv

_iv._

"It is done," the sage boomed, struggling to be heard over the gathered crowd. "The prince has triumphed."

The steady rumble reached a crescendo of cheers and jibes, all mixed together in the crisp morning air. The commotion was fit for a true bout, not a training duel, but that had been the way of it for some time now, every fourth day when Loki made his appearance in the practice rings. Across from him, Loki's opponent got back to his feet, one hand favoring the bruise blooming on his chest dark as the night sky, just over his heart.

Loki had started back towards his corner of the circle before the declaration was even finished, but paused long enough to nod scant acknowledgement of Ranulfr's grudging bow. His mouth turned in a smirk as he did so and Ranulfr scowled. The sage, Leikr's brow furrowed as he watched this exchange, but Loki's grin did not falter. Ranulfr was two hands taller than Loki and four stone heavier. He was also amongst that segment of the youth of Gastropnir who hadn't yet accepted that Loki had learned to compensate for such disadvantages long ago. The shattered pieces of Loki's jagged knives still littered the ground around Ranulfr's feet. They didn't pierce the skin — not in practice — but they certainly stung. Let him be called smug. He had earned the right and earned it anew each time.

One loud voice cried out for another match, followed by a hum of disappointment as Loki moved one arm in an understated gesture and his armor began to slough off. Another time he would have remained in the yards longer, even if just to watch, but today he was eager to return to his studies. The thick layer of ice thudded dully as it hit the hard-packed ground. Loki rolled his shoulders and reached for his tunic, feeling, as he always did in that moment, thinner than usual.

As two others claimed the ring, the crowd drifted, halving. Loki's forehead itched abominably, an affliction to which he was becoming used. The skin was tight around the scars. He kept his hands at his side and tried not to wrinkle his brow. The last thing he wanted to do was draw more attention to it, hopeless as it seemed.

In the milling crowd, Brynja caught Loki's eye as he turned to go inside, back to his chambers where he could be in peace. She turned away immediately, her pretty face flickering mortification and annoyance in turn. Loki could only muster relief as she hurried in the opposite direction.

So it had been since the day, after a bout, when she'd pressed herself against him in a darkened corner of the keep, and so Loki hoped it would remain. Loki liked Brynja well enough, but he had little desire to repeat the ordeal. It had been interesting at first, he could admit, but then it segued firmly into uncomfortable as Loki, theoretical understanding of the principles though he had, failed to deliver on whatever expectations Brynja had for kissing princes in secret corners and Brynja's charms, vaunted as they were, failed to overcome Loki's vested disinterest in being the prince in question.

He'd had half a mind to describe the entire thing to his parents as vengeance, but refrained when he decided that it would embarrass them all equally. That or compel them to offer instruction. His silent resentment would have to suffice.

It had been a protracted fight — the conflict over Loki's crown adornment — beginning when he was of an age for it to be appropriate but made no move to go to the sages himself and ending when he was well past that age and his parents would abide it no longer.

"It's a necessary emblem of maturation," his mother had said.

"You cannot be content to stay a child forever," his father had said.

"I fail to see how rutting is a meaningful measure of adulthood," Loki had said.

As was often the case, a prince did not get to do solely what he wished, a lesson Loki had learned in childhood, but of which he wished he had fewer occasions to be reminded. At least in this, unlike his battle training, he would never have to suffer a crowd.

Or so he hoped.

As he fled the clutch of his peers, his eyes scanned briefly for Skadi. She'd come to Gastropnir weeks ago, but had barely spoken to him in that time. At first he'd assumed she was busy with Ivarr, but that had not borne out as he was off on a hunt. Still Skadi had not found the time to harass Loki as would normally be her wont.

There had been a scuffle some weeks prior, in the Iron-Wood with the trolls. Loki knew that much and more besides; he knew that they had been planning far more than that. He did not believe that Gastropnir was in danger, but how dogged his parents had been in keeping talk of it from him was vexing. It was no easy task to keep Loki from finding out something he wished to know, but they seemed dedicated to it in this. Skadi, who lived so near to Jarnvid, would be a fine source of information had she not been avoiding him. When last Loki attempted to speak with her father the man had raged only semi-coherently and cast Loki out. Thjazi's moods had only worsened over the years, but this had seemed more focused than most. A connection between all of these occurrences seemed likely and, as he confirmed that Skadi was nowhere to be seen, Loki filed it away for later examination.

The lights in Loki's room rose as he entered and other, less obvious, charms disarmed themselves. He stood still for a long moment, enjoying the familiar comfort of the thrum of his own magic in his own space. His mother called it his cave and likened him to a great bear, to be disturbed at one's own risk. Not that the comparison, regardless of how apt, had ever stopped her. He sat at his desk and ran one hand through his hair, curls springing back into place as his fingers passed, and looked down at the puzzle before him.

His last trip to the little cabin near the taiga had not been entirely fruitless. He had borrowed the knowledge crystal from Thjazi's shelves while he was there. A crook of his fingers and a straight face when Thjazi turned back to him were all it took. The old man's senses had dulled and Loki's abilities had matured. He would return it, of course; he wasn't a thief. But not until it had surrendered its secrets.

Coaxing out the spell formations it had recorded and notating them had been the easy part. Actually making sense of them was what had plagued him. It was an incomplete picture, an obvious product of Thjazi's fractured mind. Putting down complex spellwork from memory was a difficult task in the best of circumstances. On other occasions, Loki might have given it up for lost as he had been forced to do so many times in the past, but this was too extraordinary to let go without exhausting every resource.

He couldn't make much of what the crystal contained, but he understood that it was concerning the arts of travel through the realms.

Jötunheimr hadn't possessed such knowledge since before the war that saw it lost to them forever, lost with Niflkist, lost with the sages who had figured out how to use its power to carry all the peoples of Jötunheimr through the cosmos if need be. This was nothing so grand as that. Asgard had ensured that only they would have the ability to travel wherever they liked whenever they liked. But there were other paths, less free-ranging and more suited to individual travelers, but enticing nonetheless. And who was to say what could be discovered, what could be understood, if this first small step was taken?

Loki had a talent for travel, for movement from space to space. It was one of the few compliments Thjazi had ever given him. If anyone was going to put the scattered pieces together, to fill in the blanks, it would be Loki. He knew it. But knowing was doing him little good now.

He didn't realize how long he'd been staring at his own notes until his eyes began to ache with the force of it. He sighed with a drama that he would normally reserve for others and pushed away from the table. He paced the long rug in front of the hearth before throwing himself onto his bed. The ceiling offered no answers, but as he lay there he did hear footsteps nearing his door. With a moment's concentration and just a hint of magic, Loki identified the visitor.

He considered, briefly, taking to the shadows where he could be left alone. His intellectual failures and the nagging feeling that things were being kept from him left him little in the mood for company. Putting it off, however, likely would do him no good.

"Come in, Mother," he called out archly before she'd a chance to knock.

In she came. She looked at him appraisingly.

"Very busy, I see," she said.

"I'm thinking." He cast one arm over his eyes.

"Always dangerous," Farbauti replied.

Loki counted her footsteps as she walked, then he sat up when he realized she was nearing his desk. Oh, how off he was today. He should have magicked anything incriminating away when he heard her approach.

"Have you been out at Thjazi's again?" It was not a question she needed him to answer, but she expected an answer nonetheless.

Loki shrugged expansively.

"Skadi is a friend."

His mother turned to face him, her brows drawn, her hands on her broad hips.

"A friend you see when she comes here. We've discussed this, Loki."

"You needn't concern yourself over Thjazi, mother," Loki said, his face a mask of earnestness, palms out, beseeching. "He's just a mad, old man."

If Farbauti was moved, she did not show it, and crossed over to Loki. She pressed her palm to his cheek. Her cool hand sheltered half his face. She smiled down warmly at him, her mass of dark, curly hair haloing her face.

"And you know so much of the world, my little one, to mark the mad from the sane and the dangerous from the safe?"

_Yes,_ thought Loki. _Of course._

"It was weeks ago," he said, instead. "I haven't been back since." This truth he offered and hoped she would not press.

She stroked her thumb along his cheek, then smoothed his hair before she released him. The matter dropped, for now.

"I heard you only stayed for three bouts today," she said pointedly.

Loki pressed his lips into a thin line. "I've been feeling a bit peaked."

"Is it that that's made you so short with your opponents? And your instructors?"

He rolled his eyes. "Has Leikr complained about me again?"

"Don't be smart," she warned.

"I can't help it," he replied innocently.

Firmly, she pinched his ear.

"Since you're ill, I think I should not bother you with what your father and I wish to discuss." Her mouth twisted wryly and Loki saw himself in it.

He smiled at up at her.

"I would bear it for you and father, of course," he offered, then stood and bowed a grand bow. "Out of the most profound filial loyalty."

Farbauti looked as if she might smile, but stifled it. Her expression grew serious.

"This isn't a jest, Loki," she warned him. "And it has left your father… agitated. Please treat it with the weight it is due, or he will not think you ready."

Loki no longer had to feign interest. "Ready for what? Is this about the trolls?"

Farbauti only looked at him and lay a hand on his shoulder.

"Come along," she said, and steered him from the room.

His father awaited them in the den. He hunched in his chair near the hearth; the flickering light of the fire making shadows in the peaks and plains of his face. His thoughts were clearly far from there and then. It was a familiar posture. When Loki was a small child, Farbauti would take him and set him at his father's feet at such times. He would gambol about, his father's legs to him like the great trees of Jarnvid, until Laufey's mood relented and the king of Jötunheimr lifted the prince of Jötunheimr into his arms.

Loki was older when he understood what more he was than his father's son. He was hope for the future, to bring his father away from the wounds of the past. It had been many years since he had seen his father sitting thus, or at least many years since his father had let himself be seen.

Farbauti went to his side and perched upon his chair. Loki followed and stood opposite her.

"What do you know of what has been happening?" Laufey asked.

"Nothing, Father," Loki responded immediately.

His father narrowed his eyes, the turn of his mouth dubious.

"It has always been all but impossible to keep you entirely out of anything, Loki, so let us be as expedient as possible."

Loki nodded and confessed what he knew: "Some weeks ago, we skirmished with the trolls in the Iron-Wood. Subduing them went quickly. More quickly than usual. But there was more planned on their part. What, I'm not certain."

Laufey laced his fingers together in front of him as he listened. Farbauti stroked one hand along his back, her fingers ghosting along the adornments there, and Loki knew that whatever was happening was more dire than he'd dared to imagine.

"We did not put down the trolls," said Laufey. "Asgard did."

Loki gaped. "What- how? _Why_?"

What did Asgard care for Jötunheimr? He'd heard his father say it so many times: they had gutted her and left her to die. The Jötnar were too strong to wither away, but they lived by that strength alone, not by the Æsir's grace.

"They came under cover of the storm," his father said, voice tight, and even Loki could not pry apart all that was twisted up in his tone. "Odin's armies had been fighting trolls in the forests of Svartálfaheimr. Their Gatekeeper saw and heard the trolls' plans. After Svartálfaheimr, they sought to take our Jötunheimr. The plans to move on Gastropnir were already set."

"They would never have succeeded!" Loki scoffed.

"And now," Farbauti said. "They will not have a chance to try."

"But why?" Loki asked again. "Why would they help us?"

Farbauti rested her hand on Laufey's shoulder, then. Her thumb moved back and forth.

She said: "Asgard wishes to treat with us."

"Asgard thinks itself the savior of all Yggdrasill," Laufey said. It grated out from between his teeth.

"Both can be true," Farbauti countered.

"Will you?" Loki asked and if his expression was not at all schooled, if it was open and young and hopelessly ignorant, he did not care. "Will you treat with them?"

The truce between Laufey and Odin, between Jötunheimr and Godheimr, had been in place Loki's entire life. There was no diplomacy, no friendship; there were few terms. Asgard let them be, and Jötunheimr knew its place and stayed there and rotted in it.

"We will," said Laufey like a thing torn from his chest. "Long ago Asgard made the force of its displeasure a heavy burden. Few would risk their wrath by holding out a hand in friendship to those they had snubbed. Asgard did not just defeat us; they exiled us."

Again, his mother's hand smoothed along his father's back and unlike Laufey, she looked at Loki as she spoke.

"For the good of our people, for the good of the realm, we can do nothing else."

"We need you, our son, our heir, to stand with us in this," Laufey said. "You are growing into a man and there may never be a more important time for you to be involved in the dealings of the realm. We will meet with Odin Allfather in Álfheimr three days from now to talk of this, to plan for the future. You will come with us."

"Yes, of course," Loki said. He would go to Álfheimr, to another realm. The hope that he might visit yet other realms roared in his chest. He thought of Asgard and its rumored splendor and its treasures, stolen though they might be. He had never been farther than the borders of Jarnvid. He'd always known that Gastropnir was not the whole universe, but it had ever seemed like his. No longer.

He did not realize he was smiling until he saw his mother's pursed lips. It was not humor that gripped him, but he remembered her warning anyway. He did not set his face quickly enough.

Laufey stared at him and his crimson eyes were unreadable. Then he reached out for Loki gently patted his cheek.

"Smile if you like," Laufey said. "It comes easily to you, so you should."


	6. blush of spring v

_v._

From atop the parapets of the inner wall overlooking the Outyards, Laufey announced his intention to treat with Asgard. The Jötnar were at as much of a loss as their prince had been. A murmur rose, confused and conflicted and growing ever louder. Loki's eyes found Skadi in the crowd, standing towards the front with Ivarr and the other young warriors. She had never been good at hiding her emotions, and she had become no better at it with age. Her brow furrowed and her lips pursed. He wondered how long she would wait to tell her father.

The sound of the people chattering among themselves blocked out all else, until a voice cried out: "Will they return what they've stolen? Will they fix what they've broken?"

Loki could not pinpoint where the voice came from, but he thought it sounded like Tryggr, the eldest of the order. Whoever it had been, Loki could all but feel the ire of the crowd rising. Until Laufey roared over it, his voice breaking through the tumult. The people fell silent.

"They seek to make amends," said Laufey, and the conviction in his voice spread out like a living thing, willing his subjects to believe it, even if, Loki knew, Laufey did not necessarily believe it himself.

Loki had never seen the like. Laufey did not often address his people; not all at once. There had not been need in Loki's memory. He knew of history, knew that the throne of Jötunheimr had power attached to it that was beyond understanding. Power over the realm, perhaps even over its people. But he'd also assumed that had gone when Niflkist was stolen, lost. Perhaps not.

All had grown quiet, if not calm, in Gastropnir by the time they set out. It was strange for Loki to walk through Utgarde with others. For so long it had felt almost a private place. His parents and their escort marched through with gazes staunchly forward, lingering on nothing. Their steely eyes made it feel more a tomb than it ever had before. Then, at last, they stood: his mother and his father and Leikr and his two seconds, surrounded by a knot of their fiercest warriors. They stood just beyond the shattered gates of Utgarde and waited for the Bifröst to take them away.

It began with a light in the sky, darting among the clouds that foretold spring flurries. Then it descended on them, all color and brightness. Loki was weightless, formless; his senses as he had always known them abandoned him, so he reached out with all he had left: the magic at his core.

He felt the whole of the cosmos speeding by, but as if from under a glass. Trapped in the Bifröst's power, he could not touch it. Then, he felt the searing of Asgard's magic, of the Gatekeeper, like an inferno raging at his back, before it was gone just as quickly. And, suddenly, they stood on Álfheimr.

A forest stretched around them, lush and green, not dark like Jarnvid, and in front of them, a castle of living wood curved up towards the sky. An envoy of elves was upon them before the spots had stopped dancing in front of Loki's eyes.

One of them, with a wealth of red hair falling down his back, addressed Laufey in the sibilant tones of the elvish language. A greeting, appropriately deferential, if cautious, Loki surmised. He had learned the language of the Æsir as a child. Some of the oldest records, history and literature, were written in it, from before the last war — before the wars that preceded it. The sages all spoke it, as did the elder among those favored by Laufey's house. But Loki had little experience with the languages of any of the other realms. Jötunheimr had not had contact with them since before even Loki's father was born. Even when they did, the others could be counted upon to know the Æsir tongue as well.

The envoy led them inside, and even across that short distance, Loki, sweltering in this thick lined tunic and leathers, envied their warrior attache. As was traditional, they wore only their warrior's breechcloths and armor — magicked ice molded to them like a second skin that even their many adornments showed through, with finely crafted metal pieces reinforcing where needed.

The heat was slightly less oppressive inside, though not assisted by the crush of bodies. The great doors opened immediately into a grand hall filled with people, repast, and celebration.

Along the sides of the hall, elves danced, men and women alike, clad in diaphanous scraps of cloth. Their thin bodies undulated to the music that filled the hall, but for which Loki could not discern a source. Æsir were scattered among them, watching, applauding, and jeering, many of them obviously already in their cups.

Loki thought to scoff at how feeble-minded they were to be so easily distracted, but he noticed members of his own party whose eyes had been caught as well. Loki sighed irritably. There was some small amount of magic being worked as the elves wove their bodies about each other, but not enough to warrant such reactions.

At the end of the hall, on a raised dais, sat Huldunnr, Queen of Álfheimr, her chestnut skin glowing in the light. For all the revelry around her, she looked unspeakably bored. Loki supposed he might be disinterested as well if his court were being used as a neutral ground for diplomatic negotiations that had nothing to do with him.

In front of her, at an oval table, sat Odin Allfather, alone. He stood as they approached, staff in hand and helmet rising high. Loki's first thought was that Odin was small. A small man, pale and gray, shorter even than Loki. The weathered lines of his face seemed harsh and though fire burned in his one eye, his posture spoke of a man serenely assured of his place and his power.

"Hail, Laufey, King of Jötunheimr," said Odin in barely accented Jötnar.

"Hail Odin, King of Asgard," replied Laufey in kind, but when next Odin spoke, as he took his seat, it was in his own tongue.

"Let us better the peace between our realms," he said and gestured for Laufey to sit.

"You remember my wife," Laufey said. His voice rasped harshly over the foreign syllables as the sages and warriors fell back, leaving only Loki and his parents. Farbauti smiled, as did her husband, when she took a seat to Laufey's left. Odin did not. Farbauti winked her right eye at him conspiratorially.

"My heir," said Laufey and raised a hand in Loki's direction. "Loki Laufeyson, Prince of Jötunheimr."

Odin's regard of Loki was swift, but piercing, and Loki met it, mask of calm in place, and inclined his head in a respectful bow. If Loki's brow still beaded with sweat, Odin would not think it due to him.

"My wife watches over the realm and our own son in my absence," said Odin as Loki sat. Queen Frigg, as Loki understood, had been instrumental in this offer of diplomacy. He wondered if her absence was an act of disrespect on Odin's part or simply distrust.

"Your boy is of an age with Loki, is he not?" Laufey asked. Loki did not have to wonder at the meaning there. There were multiple levels of translation: Æsir to Jötnar, subtext to plain speech. _He is old enough to witness this. Either he is inept or you coddle him._

"That he is," Odin allowed. "A strong, hearty boy."

_Unlike your boy, so thin and small._

Loki was too familiar with such insults to allow any reaction to show.

"What must we offer," asked Laufey and his voice was harsh, tired already of games. "For this betterment of which you speak."

"Naught but your friendship, offered freely and truly," Odin said.

"And what," asked Laufey carefully, "do you offer?"

"The same." Odin's eye narrowed. "We have all suffered for the past, in blood spilled, in immeasurable tolls taken. But what is lost in war cannot be regained. We can only move forward to a brighter future."

Loki thought of Utgarde lying in ragged ruin, and of the old temple where, if he tried hard enough, he could still feel the vestiges of ancient sorcery and the gaping void in its center in which life and power once thrummed.

Loki could see on his father's face that his thoughts were not so different. Laufey looked like he might stand, release the tension banding through his body by leaping across the table, or simply turn and walk away. Then, Farbauti dug her nails into Laufey's arm and he clenched his jaw, then released it.

Laufey's nod was slight when it came, but Odin waited for it before he continued.

"It has been millennia since there was open communication between our realms, and more since we shared their many splendors. That should change, for a start. I would invite whomever you deem appropriate to partake of Asgard as guests."

"And in time, I suppose," said Laufey. "We can discuss my extending the same invitation."

"In time," Odin agreed solemnly.

Again, Loki's mother gripped his father's arm. Loki did not see her let it go again until they were preparing to depart.


	7. the first summer i

**the first summer.**

_i._

The palace was aflutter with activity. It had been so for weeks and, despite the fact that the cause for the fuss was less than a day away, it showed no signs of slowing down. Sif had been present for many banquets, celebrations, and occasions in the Allfather's palace, but none had compared to the sheer panic of preparation that met the news of a Jötnar diplomatic party visiting Asgard. Opinions on the politics of the situation, which could be heard in every idle conversation in the city, ranged from rumors of a permanent alliance marrying the two realms to jests about the necessity of teaching the Jötnar to use utensils and sit at tables before the feast in their honor could be met.

For Sif's part, it was too bizarre a notion for her to form an opinion. She simply could not envision what it would be like at all, the harsh, cold, monstrous warriors of legend and late night yarns from their harsh, cold, monstrous homeland living in Asgard. In the palace. Sitting at the Allfather's table, taking tea with Frigg. Thor was the only one she could properly picture in concert with the Jötnar and that was only because — be his feelings of affection or of enmity — Thor's primary method of response to anything put before him was to fight it.

In truth, the most noticeable effect the impending visitation had on Sif's life was making her feel perpetually in the way. Everywhere she turned stewards and valets and maids and guards found ample reason to shoo her away. Frigg was too polite for shooing and so had taken to ensnaring Sif in the preparations instead. Sif's lack of eye for — and interest in — the appropriate variety and volume of bedding in the Jötnar's rooms was a disappointment to them both.

Her brother, she had seen only once since the announcement was made. She would not call his mood foul, exactly, but the tense wariness emanating from him made perching in his observatory a much less peaceful proposition than it usually was. If Heimdall had seen or heard something to indicate that the Jötnar's intentions were not true, then he could bring the entire affair to a halt with just a word. He had not though and that, Sif thought, bothered him more than he would ever admit to anyone.

He had been the Gatekeeper for so long that she imagined, even under the best of circumstances, it would always chafe him to allow anyone into Asgard who had so much as considered harming the Æsir. Much less the Jötnar, who had warred with them so many times. So he stood and scowled and Sif, for the most part, left him to it as he wished.

By the morning of their arrival, Thor was likely the only person in Asgard left completely untroubled by it in any fashion.

"My parents know what they're doing," Thor declared in response to Sif inquiring about his apathy. "Even a jötunn wouldn't be stupid enough to try anything in the middle of Asgard. And if they did, we'd fell them all, easily."

He flourished with his sword, but it was too overblown for the form he was in and Sif smacked the tip away with her own sword, knocking him off balance.

"Not with sword work like that, you won't," she said, grinning.

"What's wrong, Sif?" he asked, recovering and shuffling back out of her reach. "Don't tell me you're frightened of the big bad Jötnar! Scared they're going to creep under your bed or jump out at you from behind curtains?"

"I'm not scared of anything." Sif lunged, quick and neat. Thor only just parried in time. "But perhaps you should be."

"If you're not scared, I'm certainly not," he huffed.

"But haven't you heard? This is all in preparation for marrying you off to a jötunn princess."

Their swords clashed, once, twice, three times. The blunted metal still caught the light from the early morning sun. Thor made a horrified face, eyes wide and lips curled up.

"You can flex for her," Sif continued. She feinted and danced back, blinking away sweat that was trailing into her eyes. "You've had enough practice."

At this, a bright blush spread across Thor's cheeks. Sif laughed. Silly of him to think that she had not noticed the way he'd taken to throwing his sword across his shoulders and posing just so when the young maidens of the court were passing by. Silly, but perfectly Thor.

Sif moved to the left — Thor's weak side — her footwork careful, but he paced her.

"I'd rather marry _you_," Thor said, nose wrinkling. He swung his sword in a sudden, wide overhead arc, but Sif was ready. The metal screeched as her sword slid against his in her parry. Then she drove the tip of Thor's sword towards the ground. Sif stomped on the blade and the hilt tore from Thor's hand.

Sif's sword was at his throat when he looked up. She grinned. He groaned.

"In that case, _I'd_ take the jötunn," she said.

When they'd done for the morning and the afternoon neared, Auda waited in Sif's room to help her dress. Frigg had offered Sif the use of handmaidens countless times since Sif had gotten older, and Sif always declined for fear of giving the impression that she was accepting such frills as due her — the way a lady betrothed to the prince might. There was no longer any room for such confusion, at least not from Frigg, but Sif still declined.

As kind as Frigg has been about it — and as much as Sif scolded herself that it was probably just hubris — she suspected that some small part of the queen had truly wished for Sif to marry Thor. Sometimes, Sif still felt as if she owed Frigg that for all she had done, and she did not wish to exacerbate her guilt by further playing at being the woman's daughter when she had thrown the opportunity to really be so back in her face.

Sif submitted instead to Auda's deft attentions. At first, she'd been surprised that Auda had come at all. Sif half expected Stigandr to burn her missive without ever letting Auda see it. Sif's father had barely spoken to her since she told him how she resolved the question of courtship with the queen. He had been angry about many perceived missteps of Sif's over the years, but she thought this might be the one he would never forgive. She only wished she could decide how to feel about that.

"He only wants what's best for you," Auda said as she worked scented oils through Sif's hair.

"You mean what's best for him," Sif grumbled as she slid further down in the bath until the water was to her chin.

"That's unkind," Auda replied as she twisted Sif's hair up into a loose knot. "Dunk," she commanded then, pressing down on top of the oily mountain she'd made at the crown of Sif's head.

Sif submerged herself fully. The air was cool on her knees which poked up out of the bath as her head went down. Auda's fingers carded quickly through her hair and Sif felt oddly at peace there, sightless and soundless under the water. Then, Auda tapped her shoulder and she bobbed back up.

Auda twisted Sif's hair again, this time wringing the water from it as Sif wiped her face.

"Your father loves you. He's only anxious about your future." Sif's hair hit the lip and side of the tub with a wet slap as Auda dropped it to pick up a comb. "As long as you're officially unattached, it's precarious. He just wants your status and position to be secure, so that you don't have to worry."

The comb glided smoothly through Sif's hair.

"He can be… indelicate sometimes," Auda said. "But he means well."

"The same way he means well by coming to the celebration tonight without you?" Sif sneered. She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth, but no matter how hard she bit her lip she could not recall them. The comb stopped, then went through her hair again twice more before Auda set it down gently, then quickly pulled Sif's hair into a long braid. Sif gnawed on her lip still, ashamed, as Auda coiled the braid and pinned it up, then stood.

"You finish here," Auda said. "I'll go see to your dress."

"Auda-" Sif finally managed.

"Don't forget to pumice your heels," Auda cut over her, though her voice was very quiet. Then, she was gone.

"Who'll see my heels?" Sif muttered at the empty room, but reached for the stone anyway.

The dress Auda chose was silver and had a bodice layered in translucent crystals in a way that put Sif in mind of scale mail. In silent apology, she allowed Auda to style her hair in a much more complex fashion than planned, which involved weaving a string of gems through a nearly architectural construction. Sif hugged her tight as well, before she departed, burying her face in Auda's red-blonde hair.

Auda held Sif's forearms gently when she released her and said only: "Come visit in a few days. When things have calmed."

Sif nodded and promised that she would.

The Bifröst flashed in the distance as Sif made her way to the great hall. The hall was already filled with people; those with seats stood near their tables and legions of others filled the spaces around and between the pillars along both sides of the open room, from which they would be permitted to watch the festivities up close. Outside, Sif knew, there were yet more people filling the streets in front of the palace, waiting to see the Allfather lead the Jötnar down the rainbow bridge, through the center of the city, and into its heart. Sif wondered if Auda had elected to stay and watch from the crowd or if she had simply gone home.

Near one of the tables towards the center of the room, Sif saw Stigandr caught in lively conversation, his most charming smile flashing. Sif walked, instead, towards the head of the room, where Thor stood near the table he would share with his parents and the Jötnar. Directly adjacent to it, to the left, was the table where Frigg had seated Sif. The high nobility of the court milled about it in all their finery. Lords and ladies whose names, for the most part, Sif could never keep straight, owed largely to the fact that she was hardly ever in their company outside of the formal occasions when she was sat with them.

As she approached, Sif followed Thor's gaze directly across the room to the warrior's table from which a burst of laughter erupted. At one end, the boys Thor and Sif trained with clustered towards the older men, eager to share in their mirth. Sif could not blame Thor for wanting to sit with them instead.

He smiled when he saw her, then it shifted into a smirk.

"You look very nice," he said. A muscle in his cheek twitched.

"Oh, shut up," Sif replied, rolling her eyes.

"Just for that, I'm definitely going to let one of the Jötnar eat you."

Her dress would not allow her to execute a proper kick, so instead Sif pinched Thor's arm and twisted. He flinched and snatched it away, rubbing the abused spot sullenly.

"Aren't you even a little bit nervous?" Sif asked.

"Never," Thor replied with such easy confidence that Sif almost believed him.

From an entrance behind the dais, Frigg appeared, her elaborate golden gown glittering even in the fading light. She gestured at Thor, who excused himself to go to her, and Sif moved towards her table.

Sif heard the Jötnar before she saw them. At the far end of the room a commotion of whispers picked up, then cascaded down the room, table to table, until a lady standing near Sif leaned into her husband and said: "They're here."

Odin walked in front of them in full regalia, with an honor guard marching a straight line on either side. There were more than a dozen of them: the Jötnar. They walked in loose formation. The ones on the outside were all she had ever imagined a jötunn to be. They were hulking and fierce, mountains of dusky blue skin covered with ferocious markings in strange patterns. They wore only scraps of cloth hanging down from their waists and each had bits and pieces of proper metal armor as well — though which pieces was different for each. There were women among them, Sif realized when she looked more closely, though upon noticing it became extremely hard to miss. Everyone knew of Farbauti, the queen of the Jötnar, who'd taken the Allfather's eye, but the reality of war for the Jötnar being just as much the realm of women as men was still surprising.

The second surprise was the remaining Jötnar. While the others — guards, it seemed — looked like they'd walked straight from the tales, the rest were nothing like what she expected. They were still massive, each standing a head taller or more than any of the hundreds of Æsir in the hall but half of them wore robes, intricately wrapped and tied, that put her in mind of holy men. The others dressed in furs and leathers — shirts, tunics, vests, and trousers not so different from anything one might find in Asgard.

Then, there was the last of them. He'd been hidden by the others at first, swallowed in the center of the clutch. This was assisted by the fact that, compared to his fellows, he was tiny.

His head was topped with a fall of unruly black curls — Sif hadn't even known Jötnar could have hair — and came only to the chest of the next smallest of his kinsmen. A child, Sif realized. She had never thought of the Jötnar having children, but she supposed it was inevitable that they must. Why they would bring one along to Asgard, however, she could not guess.

It was only when they came closer, nearly to the head of the room that Sif saw her mistake. Not a child, she thought, looking at the lines of his face. Slightly rounded cheeks and a defined jaw, a straight nose and sharp cheekbones. He was younger than the others, but no younger than Sif or Thor. He fidgeted with his hands, hooking and unhooking his long, tapered fingers together as he walked.

Sif wondered at him, and then, they were there. Odin circled around to the other side of the table, where the chairs were already arranged, and stood facing out at the room. Frigg went to his left, Thor to his right. The Jötnar remained where they were, red eyes on the Allfather.

"This is a momentous occasion," Odin boomed. "Our esteemed guests come to us from far Jötunheimr to spend the summer in our company in the name of peaceful cooperation and friendship."

Polite applause sounded, but it was clear that all present were paying far less attention to the Allfather than to the Jötnar, still looming, dark and silent, in their midst.

"King Laufey personally selected our visitors," Odin continued. "Scholars and soldiers both; the greatest of their people. And first among them, his own son and heir: Loki, Prince of Jötunheimr."

The surprise that swept through the room was a palpable thing. Any thought of a rote gesture on the part of Jötunheimr was summarily banished. They'd sent their prince. Sif could hardly imagine what such seriousness of intent could mean for the future.

She watched as the small one stepped forward. His thin lips pressed together and his mouth curved. Sif was not sure whether it was a smile. He glided around the table and took the seat to Thor's right.

The Allfather introduced the others one by one. The guards were as they seemed. The men in robes were jötunn sorcerers, called sages, and the others were advisors to the jötunn king. One of them, ancient and wrinkled, Odin seem to know personally from long ago.

They all sat and the Allfather bade the celebrations begin. Musicians and dancers performed as everyone ate. The best orators among the warriors recounted tales of battle, though none, Sif noted, featuring Jötnar. Some, after a bit of drink, even demonstrated their skills. Fandral — now called the Dashing — flourished his sword about in such an ostentatious manner during a faux-duel that Sif would have scoffed openly had she not been able to divine the total control and precision in his movements. His opponent, Hogun, only looked bored. In the end, Volstagg dragged them both back to their seats and called it a draw.

At her table, Sif feigned interest in attempts by the young lords and ladies around her to pull her into discussions of court politics and gossip and how the Jötnar would impact it all. Had any of them known her seat among them was entirely a function of Frigg's kindness, they would not have bothered. The understanding Sif had come to with the queen was not public knowledge. Everyone had always assumed about Sif and so they continued to do so.

Her attention was drawn again and again to the head table, where Thor seemed to be making effusive attempts to engage Loki in conversation. It was almost comical, the jötunn prince, so subdued, and Thor, who had never seen any value in restraint. They seemed, at least, to be talking. Thor gesticulating in his way and Loki's words coming quickly, to Sif's eye, as she followed the movements of his mouth. His expressions tended to flicker only briefly — amusement, perhaps; there: indignation; now, annoyance — in the twitching of certain muscles, in the narrowing of his eyes, before he set his face again. Had she his words to distract her, she might not have been able to read him thus, and she wondered if his obvious attempts to be enigmatic were working on Thor.

Above all else, however, Sif simply wished she could be sitting with her friend.

The night wore on and the musicians played and Sif carefully avoided invitations to dance. At the head table, Frigg leaned just a bit into Odin, who was still caught in conversation with the oldest jötunn. The others were stone-faced, still eating, or talking quietly amongst themselves. Thor was still speaking to Loki, and Sif recognized well the posture of challenge that her friend had taken. She wondered how direly he'd insulted the Prince of Jötunheimr, but Loki's reply seemed only disinterested and, moments later, Thor gave up and rose from the table for the first time that night.

Sif could feel the eyes on her as Thor asked someone else to dance, but she pretended quite determinedly that she did not. Thor twirled about the floor, almost wildly, with one giggling girl and then another. Still at the table, Loki stared fixedly at the proceedings, displeasure plain on his face. Did they dance on Jötunheimr? Likely, Sif thought. But perhaps differently.

She'd turned her attention to a goblet of mulled wine for only a few moments and when she looked up again, Loki had gone to the floor. He bowed to Thor's latest partner and extended his hand to her. The girl, called Sigyn, if Sif remembered correctly, froze in indecision. Her eyes darted first towards a knot of her friends and then, perhaps, to a parent. Everyone simply looked on waiting to see what she would do. With no help forthcoming, the girl swallowed, throat working, and at last took Loki's hand.

As he swept her away, Sif saw that his staring had not been out of distaste — or not _only_ that — but because he had been memorizing the steps. He was not so exuberant as Thor, but he was surprisingly graceful. His movements were fluid and controlled. It would have looked a fair sight better, though, had his face not been a mask of utter apathy.

Still, once he released Sigyn — who hurried to her friends as if to tell of a harrowing adventure — it was not long before he acquired another partner in a brave girl who'd been inching ever nearer. After that, there was another who had been whispering conspiratorially with a young man before she approached. As they began, she said something to him, smiling smugly. Then something else. Loki replied, face unchanging, and the girl fixed a foul glare on him for the rest of their dance. As they ended, she hissed out something with a sneer before she turned and walked away. Before she'd taken four steps, she tripped as if over nothing.

Thor, who had stopped his own dancing, too entertained by Loki's, waved Sif over.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" he asked her, face flushed with too much of his mother's wine.

"Not as much as you are," Sif said. In front of them, Loki had found yet another partner.

"What is he like?" Sif asked.

"I'm not entirely certain," Thor said cheerfully. "I can't tell whether he's extremely displeased about being here or just has a very odd sense of humor.

"He does, however," Thor continued. "Think himself very clever."

Sif smiled. "And what do you think?"

"I think he has very little idea how to have fun."

"Your idea of fun," Sif said, "is not always relatable." In truth, Thor's fun and Sif's fun almost always intersected, but she felt there was a point to be made nonetheless.

Thor shrugged expansively.

"Is that what this is all about?" Sif asked, waving her hand in the general direction of the de facto dance floor without looking at it.

"Yes," said Thor proudly. "I told him Asgardian dances were probably too complicated for him."

"And he fell for that?"

"I think he might have been bored," Thor admitted. "Speaking of which…"

He waved his arm and before Sif could process what he was doing he yelled: "Loki! I have another partner for you!"

She would have fled, not for fear of a jötunn prince or Thor's idea of a jest, but because she so very much disliked dancing. But by the time she turned around, Loki was already too close.

"I hate you," she said to Thor, under her breath.

Loki bent at the waist and offered her his hand. She could have declined, demurred, claimed tiredness. He was unlikely to have paid her any mind at all, much less enough to know that she hadn't danced once all night. Yet Sif could only think of the sneer on the face of the girl who'd tripped. The Jötnar had descended on Asgard in a way no one ever expected. Sif didn't know what would happen, nor was she certain exactly what she thought of it all. But there were some people whom she just didn't want to believe that she agreed with them.

His hand was large and cool and he fitted the other to her waist without preamble. He was bigger, up close. Still thin — she could see the joints stand out in his wrists — but just a bit taller than her. If her years of fighting had taught her anything about how to read an opponent, the power in his movements said that he was lean, not starved.

He stared at her, his eyes crimson on crimson, his pupils tiny specks of darkness in a sea of blood. The blue of his skin was almost luminous, this close. He didn't have nearly as many markings as the others. There was only a set of concentric curves on his forehead, then two lines making a point at the very center, near his hairline. They were scars, she realized. Deliberately raised. She wondered if they meant something or if they were just decorative, like jewelry.

Sif considered asking, but then, as she'd known would happen, the steps of their dance grew more intricate and, immediately, when she was meant to cross her foot over his, she stepped on his toes instead. At least, she thought, his thick furred boots would save him from permanent injury.

He said nothing, his expression unchanging. Sif didn't mind it the next time she stepped on his foot, or the next. But the time after that, when his eyes only darted to the side briefly and he retained the same expression of polite disinterest, Sif became irritated.

The two times after that, she huffed in annoyance. Loki's lips pressed together; they formed a sinuous line. Again, Sif did not know if she could mark it a smile. When the time came to execute a turn, she fell into him, and he was forced, wordlessly, to right her. Sif lost her temper.

"Do you speak?" she demanded. "Or only stare?"

His mouth turned and this time, it was definitely a smirk.

"I am often told I speak too much," he said. His voice was smooth and his enunciation precise, each syllable deliberately controlled. He was making every effort to overcome his accent. Sif could still hear it though, on the back ends of his vowels.

"And yet you do such an excellent impression of a mute," she said.

"I thought you would be best served," he replied, his eyes flickering to their feet, "by having no distraction. You and my feet both."

The next time she stepped on his foot, it wasn't an accident.

"You have a cruel streak," Loki said, as if it were common small talk. He'd winced at that one.

"I have no idea what you mean." Sif grinned widely.

"And you're a very poor liar, with a very poor temper."

"Do I get a turn, then?" she asked. "To tell Loki of Jötunheimr about himself?"

His touch was light on her back as they made another spin, this one successful.

"Oh, I know quite enough about myself, thank you." He put on a face of feigned consideration, but she saw him there before he set the mask — another flicker, the immediate arming and armoring of one who has learned to start fighting instantly lest they be caught off guard. "Though, I doubt it's so flattering as whatever it is you're thinking."

"You're not nearly as smart as you think you are," Sif said.

"See there, I was right," he said, as if flicking away a speck of dust.

They crossed to each other's left, and then right, another spin, and then the song ended. His hands dropped from her nearly quickly enough to be rude.

"Lady," he said, bowing deeply.

"I'm no lady," Sif replied, bristling at him, at the way he spoke and the way he looked at her. He only canted his head at her before turning on his heel and walking away.

People were watching, as they had been Loki's every move since he took to the floor, but when Sif looked, it was her father's eye on her when everyone else's had drifted away.

He looked no more positively inclined towards her than he had. She was unsure what had offended him more: that she had gotten no better at the courtly art of dance — due most to her refusal to practice — or that she had danced only once and not with Thor. All of it equally, she decided, as he looked to approach her.

Sif spun around and charged towards Thor, who was speaking animatedly with a girl with wavy brown hair. He owed her for making her dance with that insufferable jötunn.

She didn't even need to speak for the girl to immediately make her apologies and leave. The assumptions sometimes worked in Sif's favor, at least.

"For your terrible sense of humor," Sif said as Thor looked at her, aggrieved.

Behind Thor, Stigandr stopped and watched, grim satisfaction on his face.

He might never give it up, Sif knew all in a rush, the fantasy of her as princess, then queen. And she had no idea how to make him do so. Like a tidal wave, that fact drove Thor's poor jokes and annoying jötunn princes and all other considerations from her mind entirely.


	8. the first summer ii

_ii._

On his third day in Asgard, Loki squinted into the morning sun. Asgard was hot and bright and lousy with color. It made sense, he supposed, that the realm of the Æsir should be the essence of the Bifröst shaped into an abode, but that didn't make it any more comfortable. Or any less garish. Still, his aesthetic concerns were nothing compared to the fear that he would be forced to continue wasting precious time. There was so much to see in Asgard, to explore, to learn, and to understand, but Loki had barely been left a chance to start.

First, there had been that ridiculous banquet — what such excess was meant to prove, Loki could not imagine. And all the rest of his time was eaten up with diplomacy. Diplomacy for him meaning, Loki had come to realize, the expectation that he would spend every waking moment forging friendship with Thor. Logically, Loki understood. They would both be kings someday and the enmity between Laufey and Odin had certainly never assisted the relationship between their realms. There were, Loki could admit, worse things in the cosmos than making conversation with Thor. He was bombastic and simple and walked about smiling thoughtlessly as if he'd never had to struggle for anything in his life. (Though, judging by the way the other Æsir treated him, that was likely the case.) But he was friendly and disgustingly earnest and sometimes a hint of wit peeked out that Loki had not expected.

The problem was that Thor had no idea what was actually interesting about his home. Thor had showed him through the palace and then they had gone out into the city — on foot after Loki had refused to even attempt mounting a horse. But when Loki wanted to know through what method they made the east and west towers float, Thor said only: "Sorcery, of course!" When he inquired after how they kept the reservoir clean and how they arranged irrigation from it, Thor only shrugged: "I'm sure it's someone's job." And when Loki asked if it was true that Odin controlled the colors of the very sky and when both dusk and dawn came, and through what spell or artifact or act of will, Thor blinked at him: "He is king."

It was extraordinarily frustrating. They'd even passed by the library in the palace with barely an acknowledgement, and Loki'd had no chance to go back and figure out the locks and override them. Now, scheduled once again to be dragged about by Thor, he still could not.

It did, at least, save him from Leikr's watchful eye. Loki would have wondered why of all his teachers Leikr had to be the one to come along to plague him about lessons and training and respect, but the answer was simple. He was the eldest and most renowned among the sages that had not fought in the last war. So it was for everyone who had come. No one who had ever spilled Æsir blood was allowed to set foot on Asgard. Only ancient Mimir was an exception. He had already been far too old for such things during the last war, and if he had fought the Æsir before it was so long ago that only he remembered it. He had known even Odin Allfather as a child and there was value in that for their purposes.

His inclusion was fine with Loki — he had been the only one willing to speak to Loki exclusively in Æsir during the weeks before they departed — and he wished that it had been only they two and the guard every time he thought of it.

Loki slipped from the room he had been given, with its wide, wide windows open to the world and made his way, like a ghost, past the others' doors. Thor met him in the hall leading away from that wing of the palace, his smile still set in place.

"Well met, Loki!" Thor greeted him, then slapped him on the shoulder. "You are well dressed for today!"

Loki eyed him suspiciously. One thing he had learned so far was that the people of Asgard wore an inexplicably large amount of clothing, layer upon layer, even within their own homes. What one of them might think Loki's attire today — leather trousers and boots, a tunic quickly draped and tied, his arms bare to the blistering heat — especially fit for was beyond him.

"And what is it, exactly, that we are doing today?" Loki asked.

"We're going to the training yard," Thor effused. "I'll soon grow sluggish and weak otherwise."

"Ah," said Loki.

"Surely you must be falling behind on your martial training as well?" From someone else, Loki might have thought it an insult, but Thor seemed guileless as always.

"My curriculum is… flexible," he replied. Flexible because he refused to adhere to any that did not suit him. The result was important, not what tradition demanded.

Thor hummed in a way that indicated he didn't really know what Loki meant, but also wasn't particularly interested in finding out.

"Well, soon you will see what Asgardian training produces," Thor said smugly.

"I'll try to contain myself," Loki replied.

Thor led them out into the gardens. They walked through meticulously groomed hedges, sprouting flowers of every color. Right turn, right turn, then left, then around a bush cut in the shape of stallion, then the garden opened into wide space near one of the western walls of the palace. It was littered with weapon stands and benches here and there. The stone path gave way to packed clay with rings of various sizes drawn into it.

There were other boys, of an age with Thor and Loki, some swinging weapons at each other, others competing hand-to-hand. And there was one girl, her long black hair in a tail at the crown of her head. Her knee was pressed into a much larger boy's back as she held him in a headlock.

When she noticed Thor, she released her captive, grinning widely.

"So you decided to show up today," she said, as she approached and socked Thor spectacularly in the chest. Not missing a beat, Thor tried to kick her legs out from under her, but she dodged away.

"Are you that eager to be beaten?" Thor asked her.

She scoffed loudly, then her eyes fell on Loki, trailing Thor like a shadow. Her lips pursed; her mouth turned. It was not surprising. She was not the first to look on Loki with disgust or revulsion or even fear since he'd arrived in Asgard and she most assuredly would not be the last.

"Do you fight as well as you talk?" she called to Loki and he was surprised that it sounded of irritation, of challenge, but nothing more. He'd come to expect uglier things.

"Loki, you remember Sif," Thor said, smiling.

He stared at her.

"We danced," Sif spat and then he knew.

"You stepped on my feet," he corrected.

He had not thought to see any women here — it was his understanding that Æsir women fought only when there was no other recourse and they certainly did not formally train — but especially not any of the innumerable ladies he had met on his first night. Her eyes looked green from this distance, and the dusty clothes did not match the image in his mind. But it was her. There was a smudge of dirt under the mole just to the right of her long nose.

"I'm no Lady," she'd said and Loki'd thought her simply reaching for any reason to take offense with him. Maybe that hadn't been it at all.

"Perhaps I needed a better partner," Sif replied.

"Or a better pair of feet."

Thor guffawed at this and Sif swung at him again. He blocked it this time.

"It's true, you are a terrible dancer, Sif," Thor said.

"Which is why I did not volunteer myself for it!" Her eyes flashed dangerously and Thor raised his hands in surrender. Her fingers twitched, as if her fist might clench, then relaxed. She turned again to Loki, her ponytail whipping through the air.

"Still staring, are you?" she asked and only then did he realize that he had been. "You're a strange one, you know that?"

"Am I?" he asked and tilted his head as he continued regarding her. Since she had pointed it out, he might as well make it intentional.

"Yes." She crossed her arms. "For one, you're rather small for a jötunn prince, aren't you?"

"And you're rather feminine for an Asgardian warrior."

Her jaw tautened. He'd struck true. Loki saw the desire to hit him clearly on her face, as she'd likely hit a hundred others, as she would a thousand, for that same transgression. She'd prove herself as many times as she needed, again and again and again, determined to do as she liked.

His chest felt queerly tight. The picture of her in his mind grew more accurate by the moment. The girl in the silver dress. The poor dancer with the poor temper. There were crystals in her hair. They'd sparkled against the dark tresses like stars in the night sky. He hadn't thought so before, but it was clear now in his memory.

"Do you doubt my skill?" Sif asked, voice dropping. "Fight me, then."

Loki found, to his surprise, that he very much wanted to. They'd attracted all the others' attention by now — very little of it kind. A few jeers sounded at her challenge. He had not come to perform for these people, though he was used to being watched. But he wished to fight her, his curiosity so painfully aroused by this lady, the warrior Sif.

"No, thank you," he said. For who would Loki Laufeyson be had he not self-control?

Loki ignored the surge of insults from their audience.

"Come, Loki," Thor urged, delighted. "Be sporting!"

"No, Thor," said Sif. She had not taken her eyes from Loki's. "We cannot force him. If he is afraid, let him have his fear."

It was not her taunt that made him relent but that she turned away and he had not yet wanted her to. He looked across the grounds. A tree stood on the far side of the nearest ring. It was small, but its gnarled, leafy branches cast a thick patch of shadow. Loki took two striding steps forward, and set his hand on Sif's shoulder. She tensed, and he let his hand drop away.

"I'm more comfortable barefoot," he said when she looked inquisitively at him.

She smirked, pleased, and Loki walked towards the tree and leaned against it to remove his boots. The others were watching Sif deliberate over a weapon, calling out their suggestions. Loki breathed out, the relative cool of the shade a comfort. It would only take one, he decided. He pulled the shadows around him.

Had anyone been watching, he might have blinked, seemed to be there and not there all at once before resolving back into himself. But no one was. A perfect image of Loki paced towards the ring where Sif waited. Loki stood under the tree.

"Your weapon?" Sif asked.

_I have my own_, Loki mouthed and his voice came out of his scout's throat.

"May they serve you well," Sif said, then charged.

She'd chosen a staff and swung it at the scout wide, testing. The false Loki danced out of the way. The true Loki moved closer, unseen, sweat blooming on the back of his neck as he concentrated.

Sif's strikes became quicker and so too did the scout's dodging. Loki could not actually move so fast, but the scout was bound only by his imagination. He stood at the edge of the ring and watched as Sif, eyes narrowed, attempted to make sense of what was increasingly physically impossible. The hair at the nape of Loki's neck was soaked through and perspiration beaded on his forehead. Blanketed in shadows, he was cooler, but the heat had already drained him. Before his concentration could flag, he made his move. So did Sif.

She feinted, then spun and feinted again, before launching a real attack. She'd seen the pattern of the scout's dodging — easier to maintain than choosing each minor movement — and it might well have landed even if Loki had not intended to allow it.

Sif's staff sailed through the scout's side and came out the other. Loki twisted it out of her hands as it did. He appeared again, to their eyes, as the scout shimmered out of existence. He caught his arm about Sif's neck and pulled her to him, her back to his front. The dagger of ice he held in front of her was as smooth and finely crafted as one of steel.

"A fine trick!" yelled Thor, breaking through the shocked silence.

Sif's breath came heavy; it puffed against his bare arm. He could feel her heart beating rapidly, through her back against his breastbone. His heart sped up as if to catch it. She had very pointy elbows, he found, when she drove one into his stomach. His knife dropped and shattered on the ground. Loki bent, but did not release her. Sif kicked back and hooked her foot behind his ankle.

They both fell backwards to the ground. She wriggled from under his arm as he gasped for the breath that had been knocked out of him, then she flipped over on top of him. Her knees were at either side of his waist and her hair hung down, over her shoulder and brushed against the side of his face. She held a jagged shard of his knife to his neck. The smile that broke across her face was wolfish.

"You're surprisingly brutish," Loki said.

She seemed to take that as surrender. She dropped the shard immediately, shaking her hand as if injured. Then she brought it to her mouth and breathed on it. Loki watched this, pinned beneath her. Then she pushed up off of his chest and stood.

Thor was applauding, but the others seemed to have lost interest. They milled about again, a few looking at Loki with unveiled distaste. The bright Asgardian sun shined behind Sif as Loki lay in her shadow. Her ears stuck out a bit and the light made them bright red.

She held out a hand to Loki and helped him stand.

"You might be just a little bit clever," she allowed.

"I was barely trying," he retorted.

"I've certainly never heard that before," she said wryly. Her breathing had returned to normal. He couldn't feel her heartbeat any longer. His still rushed on ahead.

This was strange. No formal bow, no payment of respect, no one to call the bout. They just rolled around like dogs in the dirt until they were satisfied. Yet, he could not remember the last time someone had smiled at him after a bout as Sif was doing now.

"Are you done?" called one of the others, a thick boy with dirty blond hair. "Some of us have real fighting to do instead of playing tricks."

That, at least, was just like home.

"As if you've ever won a real fight, Siggeir," Sif called. She rolled her eyes at Loki, a confidence. Her hand brushed his back just briefly to urge him forward, and he followed her out of the ring back to where Thor waited.


	9. the first summer iii

_iii._

When she could put it off no longer, Sif returned to her father's house. On the night of the welcoming banquet Auda had said a few days. Sif let it go for weeks, just as she had cleaning her room as a child. She avoided her father — which was not so difficult as he had not sought her out either — and spent her days with Thor as she ever had. Though now with Thor meant also with Loki and that, at least, was new.

Her estimation of him had improved after that first night when they danced. He was every bit as insufferable as she had thought, but he was also a boy, little different from other boys, she'd come to find. He was quite sure of himself and needed, always, to be right. Then there were the things that were purely Loki. How he hated to say what he truly meant and preferred instead to pretend everything significant a jest, at the expense of others or even of himself. She didn't know whether he truly felt he had something to hide or if he just found it amusing not to speak plainly, to tie his words and meanings, his truths and lies, in knots and leave them for others to unravel. Sif would not grant him the satisfaction of attempting to figure him out — or letting him think she was doing so — and their coexistence was surprisingly peaceful for it.

Thor had confided that he thought Loki odd, but inoffensive. Once, long ago, he had thought the same of Sif, so he was happy to let it lie.

Sif left them both that evening, though she did not mention why, and set out into the city. The twilight sky boasted a riot of violets and oranges, swirling behind the mountains and reflecting off of the sea. The balmy summer air made the journey at least pleasant, even if Sif's thoughts would not be calmed so easily. She'd dressed well, an offering or a compromise, whichever way it was taken, in a well-cut red jacket over her neat riding leathers. Auda smiled at her when she opened the door.

The house was the same as it ever was, her father's tastes specific. He waited at the dinner table, his regard icy. Their meal was punctuated only by Auda's pleasant inquiries after Sif's activities. Sif answered dutifully, ignoring her father's pointed silence.

"You should come by more often, Sif," said Auda. "The house is so much livelier with you in it."

"She will be back for good soon enough," Stigandr said, breaking his silence at last.

Sif set down her fork. "Is there something you wish to say, Father?"

"What would it matter if there were?" he asked. "You know so much. Why, you know everything already. No need to listen to me or anyone else."

"I don't need to know everything to know what I want," Sif said, pushed out through her teeth.

"What you want?" he spat. "What you want is nothing to what you need. You want, it seems, to insult the queen, the prince, the Allfather! But I assure you it does you no favors."

Her muscles tensed. Sif gripped the edge of the table to keep herself seated. Her knuckles trembled, whitened.

"The only one insulted is you!"

He scoffed. "Do you think everyone is so graceless as you? That they reveal all they think and feel to anyone who asks?"

"Stigandr, please," said Auda, but he ignored her.

"Why do you resist it so?" Stigandr asked Sif. His brow softened, his curiosity genuine, and Sif thought she might weep for it. "Is it- is it only to be willful? To punish me for some transgression I do not know?"

"Father-" Her voice broke. She hated it.

"You must have some affection for Thor, the way you follow him about like a dog." He threw up his hands, dripping frustration. "Even now, when he's burdened with that filthy jötunn!"

"You leave him be!" Sif yelled; it burst from her more violently than she expected. "Loki's got nothing to do with this!"

"Is there someone else?" he asked, eyes narrowing.

"What?" Sif breathed.

"Is there another?" Her father spoke each syllable with exaggerated slowness. "Is there someone you prefer to Thor that you should reject the prince of all Asgard? Tell me who it is and if he is appropriate then perhaps-"

"No!" Sif flew from her seat. A glass of wine upended and spilled. It trailed a sticky, red river across the table. "There is no one else! I am not a _brood sow_ to be given away at your whim! Why is it so hard for you to understand that I have- I have thoughts- feelings of my own! Aspirations beyond who you want me to spread my legs for."

His face went pale, and his beard looked redder for it. Auda's mouth made an "o" from which a smothered sound emitted. Sif had never spoken to her father thus, and now she could not stop.

"If you wish to choke all the will, all the life out of me, then do it for real. At least then I could fight and not be expected to give in by inches, like a _good_ daughter."

The wine had made it to the edge of the table. It dripped mournfully onto the floor.

"Get out," said Stigandr.

Sif gaped at him.

"Consider yourself relieved of the burden of my concern- of my love for you. Do not worry on it again. Do as you like and leave my house and do not come back."

"Stigandr!" Auda yelled, aghast, and at last he looked to her. Sif's body felt as stone. She could not move it.

His voice was soft as he spoke to Auda. "She does not want for my influence or my opinions, and she does not respect them. I stifle her. She wants to fend for herself. Then I'll let her."

He stood and paced from the room and as he disappeared through the door, Sif turned and ran. She burst from the house and into the street with force such that it spooked her horse. Auda came after her and grabbed at her arms, cradled her face.

"Sif!" Auda said, as Sif struggled. "Sif, listen to me! You two are alike in temperament. You are both hurt. You will both calm. Come back in-"

"No," Sif said as she wrenched away. Her eyes burned furiously. She would not cry. "I am sorry, Auda. But no. I will not come back."

She loosed the reins from the post and mounted, then raced off, almost blindly into the night. The evening had grown no colder, but it did nothing for her eyes, they ached and ached. She made her way to the central road, which cut a straight line through Asgard, and her eyes fell on the Bifröst in the distance. Her chest hitched, her throat closed, and she swerved away. She could not be seen, would not be seen, like this, not by anyone.

"Please," she whispered into the air, knowing it would carry, knowing he could hear. "Do not look."

Sif rode for the palace. When her horse was dealt with she streaked from the stables and out into the gardens. The interior training yard was empty, as she had hoped and, in the moonlight, she paced one of the rings back and forth like a caged animal. Sobs tore at her chest, her lungs cramped with them, but she would not give them voice. Instead, she pulled a glaive from a weapon rack.

She worked it and worked it through forms. Parry, spin, thrust, slash, feint, riposte, dodge, again and again. The glaive's dull blade whistled through the air, cutting, cutting, cutting through- Nothing. Until her muscles burned with weariness, until her eyes stung with the sweat dripping on her brow. When she could hear nothing but her heart pounding in her ears and her breath came in gasps so desperate that her chest hurt, Sif stopped.

She set the glaive back on its rack and, burning, ripped her jacket open. Her perfectly cut jacket for which Auda had measured her so precisely. One of the buttons, a pearl set in silver, loosened. It hung precariously from its thread. Sif thought to throw the jacket to the ground, stomp it into the clay until it, and all the things said and unsaid sitting like stones in her gut, were no more. Instead, she folded it over her arm and walked, tired, into the palace.

Voices still rose from some of the sitting rooms and halls in the more public parts of the palace, people cavorting late into the night. Sif marched past, heading to the east wing where her chambers lie. Then, she saw it.

It was nothing, yet it was something. A shadow on the floor, flickering, but with no source. Then it moved and disappeared around the corner. Sif, confused, followed. A gust of cool air hit her when she got to where it had been, though the rest of the hall was of moderate temperature. She did not see the shadow and the corridor forked. In one direction, more dining rooms, in the other the library. The pocket of cold snaked down the hall towards the library, Sif could feel it when she moved. She walked towards the library.

The door opened when she thought it should have been locked. Inside, the stacks towered around her like a forest and the smell of parchment, dust, and ink permeated the place. There was no sign of the shadow. The cool air had dissipated. She peeked down one row, then another. Nothing but books greeted her. She was ready to call herself mad and go to bed when she heard paper shuffling. She rushed towards the sound, considering what was near that she could use as a weapon, then stopped short.

Loki sat in an alcove at the end of a shelf of massive books that looked both very old and very boring. One such book was open on his lap. A tiny blue light bobbed near his head like a firefly. She wondered why, of all places in the palace, he would use his magic to sneak into the library.

"You have excellent senses," he said. He did not look up at her.

"I was meant to be a seer," Sif replied, though she did not know why. It seemed to slip from her tongue without her behest.

His eyes did dart to her then, curious, as she moved closer, but he did not voice a question.

"What are you doing here?" Sif asked him.

"Reading, of course," he said. "With the company you normally keep, I'm not surprised it's foreign to you."

"Thor can read," she said, too tired to avoid the bait.

"Indeed, he simply chooses not to avail himself. Why be troubled by so useless a pastime as thinking?"

"You shouldn't be rude about him," Sif snapped. "He isn't about you, though you give ample reason."

Loki smiled, but it was a tight smile and it did not reach his eyes.

"My apologies," he said and gestured grandly in her direction, his hand fluttering like a bird's wing. "I shall not insult your swain again, you defend him so admirably."

"I defend him because he is my friend!" Sif shot back. She was near to yelling, but she did not care. "You do have friends, don't you? You understand how they function? Not everything a person does is about fucking or marrying someone!"

Loki blinked at her, wide-eyed. It was the most caught off-guard she'd ever seen him look. Her ears felt hot, her neck flushed, as he stared at her. In the near dark, his eyes gleamed like gems, polished garnets set in his face.

"I do have friends," he said at last. "One in particular, I think you'd like very much."

As Sif watched him, he ran one long finger down the crease between the pages of his book.

"She wouldn't like you though," he continued with a smirk.

Sif huffed. "Dare I ask why not?"

"Oh, she doesn't like Æsir very much. Nothing personal, you understand. Not everyone is so enlightened as I am."

Sif meant to snort or to scoff, but instead she only sighed, long and low. Her jacket hung from one hand. It trailed on the floor. She set the other against the bookshelf nearest to her and leaned. She was so very tired, down to her bones.

In the soft blue light of his spell, Loki still gazed at her.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

He did not mean it. He did not care; why should he? But still Sif said: "No."

He waited, expression placid, but she could see him looking at her rumpled jacket and her hair, stringy as the sweat in it dried.

"I argued with my father." Should it be so easy to say? No part of it ever had been. "He doesn't approve of me."

It was much more than that, and yet it wasn't.

"Ah," said Loki. He shifted slightly where he sat. His legs were folded, leaving a space to nest the book, and his feet were bare. His chest was not much better off. He wore one of his odd jötunn style tunics: a length of cloth draped and wrapped and tied off in some arcane configuration. It swooped over one shoulder and left the other uncovered. Sif could see his collarbone and the lean muscles where his long neck met his shoulder.

"You'll prove yourself," Loki said. "You are headstrong and unrelenting, and… very skilled from what I've seen. I'm not that versed in the ways of Asgard, but no father could help but to be proud, even in spite of himself, at so fierce a daughter as the warrior: Lady Sif."

She searched his face for insincerity — for something else that she heard, gentle, in his voice, though she knew not what — and could find nothing. He hid so well, the same way his skin almost disappeared into the nighttime shadows.

"You are full of horse shit," Sif said, and the fondness in it surprised her.

"I've heard worse," he replied.

She walked over to him and sat beside him in the alcove. Her arm pressed against one of his. She could feel his skin through her thin shirtsleeves, dry and cool. She bunched her jacket up on her lap.

"What are you reading?" she asked.

He swallowed, then cleared his throat. "A history of research into the mathematical principles governing spells that alter perception."

"On purpose?" she asked. "In the library, in the middle of the night?"

He grinned. "It's really quite interesting."

"Do tell," she said wryly.

In what could only be an act of most heinous revenge, he did tell. Sif fell asleep somewhere between the third sorcerer who killed another to steal her formulas and the one who fooled an entire city of dwarves into thinking he was twenty feet tall, but did the math wrong so they also thought he was naked.

When Sif woke, the early morning sun cast blocks of light onto the floor between the stacks and slashed across the rows of books. She slumped in the alcove, curled half into a ball. Her jacket was folded beneath her head and a heavy fur cloak was thrown over her. It smelled of winter and some spicy tang she couldn't identify. She moved her foot and it hit Loki's thigh.

He still had the book in his lap and he looked at her as she stifled a yawn.

"You snore," he informed her. "Very loudly. It put me in mind of the neighing of one of your horses. I could hardly concentrate."

Sif kicked him again, though she noticed that he had, indeed, hardly progressed from the chapter he was on when she first fell asleep.


	10. the first summer iv

_iv._

Loki had once read the works of a scholar who theorized extensively about the passage of time in the cosmos. The idea was that it was relative: that time passing in one place was inherently unlike time passing in another. From Jötunheimr you could not mark the hours of the day in Svartálfaheimr; from Asgard you could not track the seasons in Vanaheimr. Later various mechanisms and methods of tracking exactly those things rendered these theories obsolete. Time was, instead, absolute. It passed the same in all places throughout the cosmos and only the reckoning of it changed. Loki knew this and still he could swear, as his time in Asgard neared a close, that days, weeks, months had shrunken away to nothing before he could experience them.

At the very edge of the palace gardens, there was a stretch of land where the perfectly pruned shrubbery turned ragged, and the grass grew longer than a precisely measured fingerlength. Just past it, the forest sprang up green and wild. Sif and Thor cavorted loudly in the grass and dirt while Loki reclined under a nearby tree, passing one of the final days of his stay.

Thor and Sif's current battle had begun with them practicing staves. At their last formal training session, the battlemaster had given Sif praise for her work and cuffed Thor for his. Sif was meant to be helping Thor improve his technique, but the brutal nature of her teaching methods and the petulant nature of her student had quickly seen the lesson deteriorate into a wrestling match.

Loki only half minded them as he wrote diligently in a small leather book. The rhythmic scratch of the pen on paper spurred his thoughts on. He'd found a book, a small book, about the Bifröst. It was far more concerned with dubiously poetic praises of the device's power and majesty, but there were some things it said — in roundabout ways — that got Loki's mind working. The bridge itself was still beyond his comprehension and operating it or anything like it would require a massive power source to which neither he nor any of his people had access. It sliced through the cosmos, dashed between the realms so easily. Working out just some of the principles of the thing and applying them to what he already knew could still help him understand other paths and other methods.

Sif shrieked as Thor cast her over his shoulder. She pushed into the momentum and flipped head over heels to land in a crouch behind him. Her hair, loosed from its tie, fell wild about her face, her shoulders, the slim column of her neck. She kicked Thor's knee out from behind him. His leg buckled and her laughter pealed.

Loki looked back to his book. The weight in his gut, which seemed to grow heavier as his days in Asgard grew fewer, lurched. There was still so much to do. He'd barely made the beginnings of a dent in the library for all his late nights. He would have something to show for it when he was home again, certainly. Much more, even, than Leikr who had shown himself too proud to take full advantage of the opportunity. He would not have the Æsir think that Jötunheimr lacked. It was a concern Loki understood — he haunted the library at night for a reason — but Leikr's inability to work around it was disappointing.

Loki had gone other places under cover of shadow as well. Once deep into the bowels of Odin's palace, to a long, guarded corridor where he could feel vital energy surging past the far doorway. There were wards heavy in the air and he knew where to stop before he set them off. He left and did not return. What good would any of this be if Odin believed Loki attempted to steal from his vault? What might have been down there — what must have been down there — still hummed in Loki's veins.

Even without those last steps, though, Loki had learned enough that he was considering attempting the sage's harrowing when he was home. He would not actually take up a sage's robes were he to pass it — and he would — he simply wanted to prove that he could. The occupation itself was not of interest to him and, as prince, he was allowed to hold no position but that into which he was born. He could acquire all the skills he liked, but he could only ever _be_ heir to Jötunheimr.

The wrestling match had stopped and his companions were both again on their feet. Thor was attempting to catch Sif, now, and he looked like a lumbering bull as much as anything else as she darted swift and nimble around him. Sif reclaimed a staff and brandished it at Thor, who slowly raised his hands in surrender. She offered the weapon to him then.

"Run through the forms," she commanded, teeth flashing, then gave him a mocking half bow before turning away.

Thor was too obnoxiously noble to cheap shot her while her back was turned and dutifully began to work through forms. Sif paced towards Loki, her hands in her hair as she pulled it up again in a tie that'd been on her wrist. Loki looked back to his writing. It was no good. The flow of his thoughts was arrested.

Sif plopped to the ground, then stretched out beside him in the grass. Her shirt rucked and a sliver of pale skin peeked out at her waist when she raised her arms to pillow them behind her head.

"And what are you studying now?" she asked, looking up at him. It had become a familiar question. She had come to sit with him in the library more times than the first. He wasn't sure why, exactly. She only ever inquired after what he was doing then harassed him about his "dull" interests once she found out.

She hadn't fallen asleep again. Not like the first night, with her cheek pressed hot on his shoulder and her hair falling against him, tickling his arm and his back. At times, she'd doze, but would always rouse herself and retire to her rooms.

She hadn't mentioned her father again either since that night. At least not in Loki's hearing. He wondered if she spoke of it to Thor, in some quiet, private place where she might reveal herself more fully, more readily. The thought sat uncomfortably in his chest and he pushed it away.

"See for yourself," Loki said and held the open book up in front of her face. Her eyes crossed briefly at the Jötnar script and she shoved it away.

"You know I can't read that," she groused.

"Oh my," Loki said, all alarm. "I'd entirely forgotten."

Sif pursed her lips — they were very slightly chapped — and made a rude sound. In front of them, Thor twirled the staff inexpertly above his head, then around behind his back. He cursed inventively when it slipped from his hands. The grass was dew-sticky around Loki; it rose up to cradle him. Beside him, Sif's eyes slipped closed, her breath coming, light, through her nose.

Asgard was so very different; he still had not gotten used to it. So different from the brisk, snow-bright plains of Jötunheimr, from the close, sturdy walls of Gastropnir. So different from dazzling the youngest children, the ones still smaller than him, with simple charms and Skadi accusing him of cheating at dice. Different, but not disparate and not irreconcilable. Asgard had its worthy parts, and one could not replace the other.

"Hold your arms straighter!" Sif called out to Thor, who grumbled something unintelligible back. "Wrists looser!"

Loki thought she might rise again and go to him, but she only sat up on her elbows. She let her head drop back, her neck bared as she stared at the tree above them, at the sky peeking between the leaves. Then she looked to Loki.

"It's time for you to leave soon, isn't it?" she asked.

Loki had not expected the question, but he took it in stride.

"In a few days, yes," he said. He flipped through the pages of his book, the symbols blurring as they flew by. "I apologize profusely for leaving you bereft of my company."

"Oh, shut up," she said, gruffly. "Your head's as big as Thor's."

"I will ignore that vile insult and continue to consider this a successful educational venture."

She expelled a breath; a loose strand of her hair fluttered in it.

"Educational for you, perhaps," Sif said. "With your tours and your library visits. What have the rest of us learned?"

"Well, if you're so alight with academic curiosity," he said and his tongue stuck briefly in his mouth. "You could always come to Jötunheimr and learn firsthand as I did."

She dropped back to the grass. "Oh, so that you could mock me with your friends without me understanding? Or to your _girl_," she said with excessive emphasis, "who wouldn't like me?"

She joked for it was a jest: the idea that she should ever want to go with- to go to the place of Æsir children's nightmares. And why should he care if she didn't? He didn't care. But he could have shown her- he could have shown any of them what Jötunheimr truly was. Not a wasteland or a corpse, but his home, his kingdom.

He filled the silence before it grew too heavy. "Then you best ask me any questions you have while you still can."

He expected her to drop it, having no actual interest in the topic, but she looked at him curiously for a moment, her expression appraising. She sat up fully, even with him.

"The markings on your skin," she said. "What are they? That is, they look as scars, but they aren't accidental. Most of the Jötnar here have so many. What's the significance?"

It was one of the only genuine questions about his people he'd been posed in his entire time in Asgard. Most people gave him wide berth; others were painfully polite and politely avoidant as if acknowledging that he was jötunn at all would shatter some fragile balance. Yet others were less kind.

"Our adornments signify many things," Loki explained. "Milestones, special skills, achievements. Rites of passage or tests of will or ability. Sometimes, even professions. By the time we reach maturity any given person's adornments might be more varied than you can imagine."

"What about this?" Sif asked. "What does this one mean?" And she reached out and brushed the tips of her fingers lightly across his forehead.

Loki's back went ramrod straight and all his words caught in his throat. His crown adornment had been such an unnecessary bother to him and he'd had so many different words — mostly derisive and dismissive — about what it truly meant. Yet all he could do as Sif stared at him expectantly was feel dreadfully, ridiculously embarrassed. Her fingertips had been callused as they rasped against his skin. She seemed so much closer than she had moments before. Her eyes were huge; the edge of her teeth peeked out, white, from behind her slightly parted lips. He wanted to- He wanted. He didn't know what he wanted. He'd only a compulsion with a force he'd never felt before and no name he dared put to it.

She was so near. He thought to run. He thought to hide himself. He thought unbidden of the shadowed corner with Brynja, of their awkward, mismatched fumbling. Of Brynja, but not of Brynja, for Bryna's hair had never been so dark as he now saw it; the angles of her face had never been so sharp. Brynja leaned down to him; she did not reach up, dragging, grasping.

It sank heavy in his chest. It was ludicrous that he should feel such, here and now and for her.

"Loki?" Sif asked, concern knitting her brow. He wanted to mimic the path her fingers had followed on his own face.

Ludicrous it certainly was, but it was also true.

"It-it only means- I am… mature," he managed and hoped she did not notice how little he sounded like himself.

She stared at him and even though he'd set his face, his mask dropped and locked into place, he felt like she could still see through him. She acted that way sometimes, as if she could read him as easily as a signpost. He usually thought she was bluffing, but today he had no wish to risk it.

Thor came over to them and Loki rejoiced.

"What are we discussing while I toil alone?" he asked, still gripping the offending weapon.

"Loki's departure," said Sif, quietly.

Thor frowned, his expression pensive. "I do think I shall miss you, Loki," he said, without further consideration or preamble, and meant it.

"I think you will, indeed," Loki agreed. Thor merely nodded, smiling.

"We should make the best of the remaining time you have with us then," he declared. "Join Sif and I. At least another critical pair of eyes could do no harm."

"Of course," Loki said and began to rise.

Thor jogged back to where he had been and Sif was last to move. She stood and wiped grass from her trousers; bits and pieces clung still to the back of her shirt and to her hair. Loki's fingers twitched to sweep them away, to fit his hand between her shoulderblades, to twine her hair about his wrist. He clenched his fist. He tucked his book into the pocket of his trousers.

"I would come," Sif said suddenly, just before he made to walk away. He turned to her, but before he opened his mouth, she continued. "To Jötunheimr. If you invited me. If I was allowed. I would come."

She smiled at him, just a curling at the corners of her mouth, but honest and without mockery or challenge. He watched her walk away.

The fanfare that met their departure was significantly more subdued than that which had signaled their arrival. Loki did not miss the great hall filled with gawking onlookers. They stood instead on the steps outside the palace. Odin Allfather, Queen Frigg, and Thor all arranged to bid their visitors farewell. Sif, where Loki had marked her without even thinking to do it, stood alongside the central road of Asgard with the others who had gathered to watch. Odin spoke of friendship and strengthening ties, and Mimir spoke of the bright future that would chase away the shadows of the past.

"You have honored us with your presence," Odin said finally to Loki and inclined his head.

"I hope then," said Loki, "that soon we in Jötunheimr should be similarly honored."

All went quiet. Frigg smiled, a pleasant smile, no different than the kindness with which she had treated Loki during their entire stay. Thor's face lit with excitement, eagerness, and Loki was grateful for it, more so than he expected he would be. He did not look to Sif.

Odin said only: "In time." By rote. A dismissal.

Loki afforded the rest of the proceedings little of his attention.

An honor guard accompanied them across the rainbow bridge, and Thor insisted, as well, he go along. This too Loki appreciated and if he wished for something else, he understood how propriety disallowed it and understood even better how unwise he was to want it.

The stern-faced Gatekeeper saw them off in another blinding flash of light.

"Oh you've already grown so much taller," Farbauti said when Loki at last stood back on Jötunheimr, where he already felt so much smaller. His mother bore him up in her arms, pressed him to her bosom there outside the gates of Utgarde. Loki endured her affection without complaint. When she finished, Laufey reached out his hand and ruffled Loki's hair and stroked it once as if he were still a very small child.

His parents spoke mostly with Mimir and Leikr during the walk back to Gastropnir, though they arranged themselves on either side of Loki, as if to block him in, as if he might slip away again. For his part, Loki enjoyed the walk more than he ever had before. The autumn wind swirled about him and for the first time in many months he did not feel at all overheated. His eyes readjusted to the calm blue cast of Jötunheimr, to the cloudy white of its daytime sky, as if to the light upon waking in the morning.

He begged release to reacquaint himself with his room when they reached Gastropnir, and Farbauti and Laufey allowed it with promise of a private dinner in their rooms a few hours hence.

His return had been announced and people had watched from the walls as he entered the keep. In the halls, they stopped and bowed acknowledgment as he passed. At the bend of the last hall before the royal chambers, Skadi waited. She stood up from the wall against which she had been leaning when she saw him.

"Did the Æsir deny you food?" she asked in greeting, though her pleasure at seeing him was plain on her face. "I hadn't thought you could get even thinner."

"I so love to upset your expectations, Skadi, you know that," Loki replied.

She came closer and wound one arm about his shoulders, half a hug and half a headlock.

"How was it?" she asked. "How poorly did they treat you?" Her eyes narrowed at the suggestion.

"Not so poorly," Loki assured her. "They did leave me constantly with their oafish prince, but I found amusements."

"You shall tell me more of it," she commanded, releasing him, and Loki thought he would at the same time that he thought of what he could not tell her. But what was there to tell of that? Nothing, he assured himself. Nothing at all worth the mentioning, nor would there ever be.

"You've come back just in time for a venison hunt," she continued and Loki rolled his eyes. "I'll not allow you to avoid it."

"Will you at least allow me to continue to my room?" he asked.

Skadi shoved him away so that she could bow, but the bow itself held no less sincerity than the others that had greeted him in the halls.

"My prince," she said, then, smirking, turned to leave him.

His bedroom brightened as if to welcome him home, all his wards still in place. It was no different than he'd left it and Loki breathed in deeply with an edge of emotion he didn't care to examine. He hung his cloak and took off his boots, and then went directly to his desk. He unraveled the charm in which he'd wrapped his research, the spell crystal and his transcriptions and equations and notes. He'd kept the small notebook he'd used on Asgard in his pocket, even when the rest of his possession were being ferried by servants.

When he pulled it out, it dislodged the remainder of his pocket's contents. He set the book down on the desk and picked up his dropped treasure. A tiny pearl button winked up at him from his palm. It had fallen from Sif's jacket that first night in the library. Its thread had broken as he folded the garment to make her a pillow. He'd thought to give it back, he'd meant to, for weeks and weeks, but he didn't. He hadn't known why then. Truly, he still didn't know now for it was only a button, of little value and even less interest. Still he'd carried it with him like a talisman, and in all the many hours she was near him, he had never once reached for it to relinquish it.

Loki closed his hand around it. It warmed in his palm. He replaced it in his pocket. When he saw her next, he would return it. When the seasons had finished their slow changes and summer came again, he'd make certain he could travel the stars, leave his home and its comforts behind, that he could go to her. And bring her what was hers.


	11. the second summer i

**the second summer**

_i._

The seasons continued their inexorable march, and Sif and her father refused to yield. It was true that they were alike in some ways. Sif would not beg forgiveness when she had done nothing wrong and Stigandr was firm regarding the seriousness of her transgressions. Even Auda — sweet, pleasant Auda — had all but given up. She visited Sif at the palace once a week and stopped mentioning Stigandr during that time in all but the most cursory of fashions. Sif became an expert at avoiding her father's haunts.

Frigg knew, though Sif had not told her directly. Perhaps Thor had or maybe even Heimdall, or perhaps she had simply divined it — with or without her talents. In either case, she did not pry, only offered the same gentle concern and quiet companionship she always had to Sif. And if she was inclined to find things for Sif to do about the palace on occasions when Sif had been quieter or more distant than usual, neither of them spoke of it.

Stigandr had declared her free from burdens and Sif did feel free. She refused to feel anything else. She redoubled the effort she put into her training; before she worked twice as hard as her fellows, now she was three times, four times more diligent. For her efforts, the battlemaster declared to her before anyone else, even Thor, that she was nearly ready. Nearly ready to step onto a true field of battle and not be felled instantly was his specific qualification, but that was his way and everyone recognized the benediction for what it was.

It was easy, then, not to think of her father, though she did think, often, of the night he cast her out. She thought not of Stigandr or her own outburst, his cold declaration or Auda's pleas, but instead of being in the library under the soft light with Loki. She'd thought he might be false in the moment, with his silvered words, playing another of his games. But in the weeks after, and especially in the many months since he'd left Asgard, she'd the distance to reconsider. His face had been soft when he spoke to her and he'd endured her interruption with little complaint. The gentle cadence of his voice had lulled her to sleep and the memory of it never faded. It came to her sometimes late at night in familiar, hazy dreams which she happily let fade upon waking. Sif had not thought she would ever feel better that night, but he had made her feel thus — as if she wasn't alone.

She would never say that she missed him — the strange, funny, little jötunn prince — not least because she had no desire to make him even more arrogant. There was an absence, still, and she felt it, at times so acutely that it staggered her. She did not mention it to Thor, even when he looked wistful himself, and she could see that he was thinking that Loki would enjoy some jest they'd heard or odd thing they'd come upon. Thor would smile at her though, as he did when they were children and shared secrets.

Sif was surprised, yet, the day Thor announced suddenly that Loki was due to return. They'd trekked away from the palace grounds that morning, off into the forest in search of a cave that one of the warriors had told Thor about. Sif felt strongly that Fandral was not worth listening to about such things and many more besides, but Thor was adamant so she went along. They found nothing, of course, and took their lunch beside a noisy stream with sweet, cold water that chased away the heat of the day.

"We should bring Loki here," said Thor. "I think he would like it, though I doubt he'd say so."

"Is he coming back soon?" Sif asked.

"Within the next fortnight," Thor replied brightly. Sif could not account for the rapid beating of her heart, so she filled her mouth with bread.

"Mother and Father confirmed it just yesterday," Thor continued as Sif chewed aggressively. "A party the same size as before with Loki, of course, at its head."

Sif swallowed, the bread a thick lump down her throat. Her pulse had calmed, but she felt an anxiousness grip her. Her teeth itched.

"I wonder if he's grown any," Thor said, between sections of an orange. "You know, huge like a real jötunn."

"He's real enough a jötunn," Sif replied. "I only care if he's grown less insufferable."

Thor chuckled at this, then stood.

"I think I shall get wet," he declared. "To cool the walk back," then he stripped with lightning speed and cast himself into the water.

Sif watched, nerves still strangely frayed, until he splashed her enough that she was forced to join him and dunk his head until he learned better.

Sif offered Frigg her assistance with the preparations a few days later. The queen looked at her with curiosity, but accepted in good faith. There was less to do this time, for there would be no grand banquet or celebration — only dinner much more akin to other evenings, in one of the small halls.

"Our guests found the last a bit… ostentatious," Frigg said as Sif held up a length of cloth for her to examine. Sif could not remember if it was for curtains or bedspreads, but she doubted it would matter overmuch.

"Did they say that?" she asked. Sif could not imagine Loki being openly rude to the queen that way. He was sly and loved to weave layers of meaning into his words, but being ill-mannered without provocation was too common for him. Of all people, Frigg would never give him reason and from what Sif had seen of them, the other Jötnar were not inclined to offer their opinions on much of anything for good or ill.

"Oh, no," Frigg assured her. "They were very polite, but I could tell.

"Darker, I think," she added, and Sif put down the cloth she had been holding and reached for another length in navy.

Frigg eyed it, then scribbled a few things on a scrap of parchment as she spoke. "It's been such a long time since we greeted them as friends. Once, we knew each other. Perhaps not so well as we could have, but now our ways have become foreign to them, and theirs to us.

"So," she said as she marked out measurements on the fabric Sif was holding, "we adjust."

Frigg smiled, but Sif's thoughts were dark as she helped her lay out the cloth for cutting. The illusion of peace, Frigg had said before this all began. Was it still that now? For all the strides they'd made was someone, everyone, still waiting to take up arms again? Sif knew the way some had treated Loki, had looked at him, even after he'd been in Asgard for months. The stories had power. Even over her, who'd liked him in spite of herself from those first days, when she'd pinned him and he hadn't treated it as an insult. It had still been so difficult for her, sometimes, to look at him and think _jötunn_, for Loki was… a companion, and a jötunn was meant only to be a monster.

"Is it working?" Sif asked Frigg. "All of this, is it working?"

Frigg considered it, the tip of her pencil at her mouth, and scratched out a few more things before she answered.

"It's a start." Her eyes were serious and she looked, all at once, very old. "Every little step is worth something. There's been much hurt on both sides, and there will always be those who are resistant.

"But as long _someone_ keeps taking steps forward, eventually we can begin to heal."

Only beginning to heal seemed so little to ask for that it should take so much. Were they still bleeding? Asgard had never seemed to be. Sif was not alive before the wars, though, so how could she truly know? And she knew so little, almost nothing, of Jötunheimr. What reason had she ever had, before now, to think about it? Perhaps, in the distance, through the stars, it had been hemorrhaging all this time.

The Jötnar arrived while Sif was preparing. The Bifröst lit up the horizon. The affair was not so formal that she needed assistance this time, so Sif dressed herself in a lavender gown and affixed a silver pin to her own hair. The hall was crowded and the guests meant that, once again, Sif would not able to sit with her fellow warriors-in-training or with Thor. Her father had not come. None of it seemed to matter compared to the churning in her stomach and the fluttering in her chest like a thousand tiny birds furiously beating their wings.

She felt tense, as before a fight, when she knew that everything would hinge on the choices she made. It wasn't an appropriate state for dinner, but Sif had little in the way of a solution since she couldn't identify the cause. She was not given to nerves; she never had been. It wasn't until her heart jumped as they entered that she thought to consider it anticipation.

As before, there were guards, sages, and advisors in the procession, but this time Sif's eyes went immediately to Loki. She could not tell if he'd grown. If so, only a small amount as he was still dwarfed by his companions. He'd dressed far better for the weather this time, and the lightest cloak she'd ever seen him in was thrown back from his sleeveless tunic. He had new markings — new adornments, as he'd called them. They swirled along his forearms. He was still very thin.

The royal family waited at their table. Odin nodded his acknowledgment and Frigg bowed, but Thor went to Loki and embraced him like a lost brother. Odin, Frigg, and the Jötnar all stared, alarmed, and at least one of the guards looked ready to pounce. Everyone stood down as Loki lifted one arm and lightly patted Thor on the back. When Thor released him, he straightened himself in an exaggerated manner, running one hand through his curls, but Sif could see how pleased he was.

At the head table, they talked animatedly through most of the night, though Thor looked to Sif often, clearly wishing for her to join them as much as she wished that she could do so. If Loki looked at Sif, he made sure not to do so when she would see him. As she could think of no reason for such subterfuge, she assumed that he had not looked.

She hardly tasted her food and sat wondering why she'd come at all: to sit alone and bored while her best friend carried on lively conversation with a jötunn prince who couldn't be bothered to spare her glance? By the time the hall began to clear and people milled about casually enough that she could get away with approaching them, Sif was no longer certain that she wanted to do so.

The choice was taken from her when the party of Jötnar, as one, excused themselves to their quarters for the night. Sif watched them go — Loki with a last bow to Odin, Frigg, and Thor — her ire rising. She stomped off herself soon after and pretended not to hear Thor calling her name. He would wish to speak of Loki, to tell her what they'd talked about and what he'd done in the time since he'd last been to Asgard, and that was the last thing she wanted to hear.

Sif got back to her room, stripped off her clothes, threw them about, and laid down to sleep before she began to feel silly. She needn't act, a small internal voice said, as if she'd stood all night in a corner, waiting to be asked to dance. Half-buried in her pillow, her face still flushed warm. Should Loki have left his hosts to come sit with her and call her a brute with laughter in his eyes and compare her to something in the stables, to glance at her from under long lashes and wet his thin lips too much when he spoke to her? Perhaps not, she allowed, but a personal greeting would not have been untoward.

Nearly an hour passed before Sif accepted that she wasn't going to sleep. She threw off her bedding and pulled on trousers, rolled up the sleeves of her shirt, and left her room. She was halfway to the library before she acknowledged where she was going and by then it was clearly too late to turn back.

She had not been to the library often since Loki went back to Jötunheimr. Though he'd often said it in jest: it was true that Sif and Thor found little reason to frequent it. The door was unlocked, as she expected it to be. She found him quickly; she knew his favorite sections.

Loki stood staring ponderously at a bookcase, eyes on a shelf a foot above his head where his little conjured ball of light floated, illuminating the titles. The light pulsed blindingly bright for just a heartbeat when Loki noticed her standing there. Its core changed from blue to brilliant white before settling as it floated down to hover near his shoulder. He was already holding two books and Sif noted that the new markings on his forearms crawled all the way up to make complex patterns on the backs of his hands. She wondered what they meant.

Loki stared openly at her, and she felt naked under his gaze, but she would not falter. His free hand hung at his side. He brought it up near to his hip as if to reach into his pocket, but dropped it again after a pause. Then, he looked away.

"You were very rude tonight," Sif said. She meant it to sound flippant, but it came out petulant instead.

"My most sincere apologies, Lady Sif," Loki said, as if she were a stranger, and actually bowed.

"Stuff it, Prince Loki," Sif replied and gave him an exaggerated curtsy. She moved closer and snatched one of his books. Even the title was too densely scientific for her to bother deciphering.

"I think you have a problem," Sif said as she set it back on top of the book he was still holding.

Loki looked at the shelves again, not at her. "Do I?"

"Have you ever considered coming to the library at a normal hour? Or even, just asking to visit it instead of breaking in?" she asked, more determined by the minute to ignore his odd behavior. "What happens if you get caught?"

"I don't plan to get caught," he said mildly as he cracked open a book and scanned a page before re-shelving it.

"No one does," Sif replied.

"If it worries you so," Loki said, "you'd best leave before you're caught up in my crime."

The smirk that accompanied it was familiar — fixed and false. It was the one he used when he wanted to pretend something a jest that he really meant. It briefly drove the breath from her like a hard punch in the stomach.

He wanted her to leave.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked.

"Didn't you just say? I know your memory isn't that poor." He traced one finger along the book spines, searching. Sif grabbed his wrist. She could feel the ridges of his scars against her fingers, smooth under the palm of her hand.

"No," she said. "Really. What's wrong with you?"

Gently, but firmly, Loki pulled his hand away.

"It's very late, is all," he said. He was comparing something in one of the books, now, to a scrap of paper he'd produced covered in Jötnar text.

She wanted to shove him into the bookshelves, knock the books out of his hands, and push him to the floor; pin his hands down and sit on his stomach and stare until he was forced to look at her. Her arms tensed, so too her legs as they ached for her to spring forward. The compulsion clawed in her belly, danced with the roiling heat rising there.

Instead, Sif said, like an invective: "I didn't mean to disturb you."

Then she turned on her heel and left Loki there, alone among the stacks as he'd wished.


	12. the second summer ii

_ii._

When Loki left Jötunheimr for Asgard, he could not help but to think of it as facing his own personal demon. In the intervening months, his parents had been vocally proud of the way he comported himself on Asgard. He had completed the sage's harrowing in such spectacular fashion that even Leikr was forced to applaud him. After all but locking himself in his room for a week, his greatest private victory came: he at last pieced together a solid equation for divining paths for cross-realm travel. And none of it succeeded in driving her from his thoughts. The specter of her eyes and her legs tight at his sides as she pinned him — her hair wild and dark as she fought — refused to leave him in peace.

It was humiliating, and he feared to think how much more so it would be when he was once again in Sif's presence. So, he'd set himself a challenge, a simple one and familiar: control. He had not imagined, though, how hard it would be not to look at her. She demanded his attention with every shift of her broad shoulders and every jut of her pointed chin. Not to mention when she vocally demanded it, staring at him from the far end of a bookshelf, growing ever more livid. He'd not planned on her becoming angry with him. At first, he'd hoped it could be a boon, until he saw the way she smoldered in her fury, eyes gone dark and feral. It did not help.

Thor, it turned out, was his only ally, ever present and either studiously ignoring or completely oblivious to the tension snaked between Sif and Loki. He was a broad, blond, laughing barrier in whose presence Loki could nearly relax. Without him, there was danger, but that was rare. Sif had not come back to the library again.

Loki sat under the gnarled tree in the interior training yard and watched them and their compatriots under the steely eye of their battlemaster. Sif had been monstrous in every session Loki had observed since his return and this was no different. Her unfortunate opponent was wheezing into the dirt, doubled over in pain, as she towered over him, weapon still at the ready. She'd gotten even better. Loki wondered if her ferociousness had come naturally as she progressed or if at least some of it was now due to her anger towards him. His blood rushed at the thought, which, he decided, was pathetic.

The battlemaster gave Sif corrections and her opponent scolding, then declared himself done with them all for the day. Thor caught the man near the path to speak with him, some urgent concern, Loki imagined, about whether he looked more dashing and imposing with sword or mace. He marked that down to say for later, then looked back to his book in order to avoid looking at Sif tending and putting away weapons.

His visitors, he realized, thought to surprise him, but he'd have to be lost in far more than a book to ignore their heavy tread.

"May I help you, gentlemen?" Loki asked without looking up at the three warriors-in-training who'd gathered about his tree. One thing that had become apparent to Loki very soon upon his arrival was that the novelty or wonder that had accompanied his first trip had worn off. This meant many things. On one side: people recoiled from him less when he surprised them and their wary stares as he walked about the palace were drastically reduced. On the other: those who'd first made cursory attempts to veil their contempt no longer bothered.

"You never join us, frost giant," asked one, the leader, Loki surmised, his blue eyes cruel. "Why's that?"

"Oh," Loki said, carefully closing his book and setting it beside him. "I have a very specific training regimen. I shouldn't like to interrupt yours."

They sneered at him as he stood. He was taller than all of them, though not so thick as any one. The last was nothing new.

"So you can study us, see what we're made of, but you won't extend us the same courtesy?"

The leader first, of course, Loki thought. A swift incapacitating blow that would send the others scattering.

"Come on," the boy said, stepping closer. "Are you wearing too many clothes? Do you need to strip down to fight like the animal you are?"

He was faster than those Loki was used to fighting, but still not so fast as Loki. He swung and Loki moved. He didn't stagger, though, and Loki could admire how well rooted he was. It would not stop Loki retaliating, but it was worth noticing. Before Loki could strike, however, Sif's knee plowed into the boy's belly. She followed it, without hesitation, with a punch square in the face. He still did not fall, but doubled over and looked up at Sif, pained.

"Siggeir! All of you!" she commanded. "Find something else to do."

"Well, we always knew Jötnar let girls fight their battles," one of them called out, as if Sif was not his equal — his better — and had not trounced each of them soundly at least half a dozen times in just the weeks since Loki had been present. That, however, was not the source of Loki's annoyance.

"I am more than capable of handling myself," he said tightly to Sif.

She looked at him indignantly. "Of course you can, you idiot. The point of having- the point is that you don't have to!"

But he did. It had always been so. He'd been ganged up on and pushed down and beaten until he learned to fight back. He was the Prince of Jötunheimr, but he was also a runt — there was no other word for it. And his people could never quite decide whether they most cherished him, pitied him, or reviled him unless he gave them reason. He didn't have to handle himself, but at home it was understood that helping him did him no favors. Sif, of course, could not know that, but, he thought, it was something she might be able to understand.

The three boys still watched them as she stared up at him, so Loki leaned close, ignoring the hugeness of her eyes and the smell of her hair and said: "Would you rejoice if Thor stepped in to fight your battles for you?"

He watched the realization dawn on her too expressive face and, ridiculously, he felt guilty at her obvious upset.

"We're all becoming friends, I hope," said Thor as he approached, but the furrow of his brow could not be mistaken. "It would upset me if we were not."

"Siggeir," he said and pulled the boy up by his collar, glaring fiercely at him, "don't you have somewhere to be?"

Thor released him and gave him a shove, and at last he and his friends retreated.

"Is all well?" Thor asked Sif and Loki then.

Sif only rolled her eyes, which Thor seemed to take as affirmation. He eyed them both for a long moment, then broke into a smile.

"I think we all need an amusement to chase away ill feelings," Thor declared, "and I know the perfect thing."

In all his years, Loki had never once considered any trip that involved camping to be "the perfect thing" for any purpose but ruining his mood. But Thor's amusements were uniquely Thor, and Loki had learned it was hopeless to expect Thor to be anything but himself. He'd promised that there would be things Loki would enjoy and whether it was true or not, Loki knew that Thor, at least, believed it to be so.

Thor and Sif, it turned out, had set out on this trip before, though they had left in the morning and returned that same evening without finding what they sought: a cave purported to lead into the old catacombs that once ran beneath all of Asgard in the ancient times, before most of them collapsed and the rest were sealed. Thor decided that they simply had not gone far enough, so they set up camp that evening in a pleasant, little clearing near a stream. There were worse places Loki could think of to spend his time, so he limited his complaints to the humidity of the Asgardian night while they arranged themselves.

Sif was largely silent through their trek and into the evening. If it bothered Thor he did not show it but by talking even more and more loudly than usual. Loki considered his options, the only marginal success of his prescribed approach, and re-evaluated his interpretation of "control."

Sif wandered off towards the stream while Thor fussed with the fire and their food, and Loki followed her. He found her sitting there, at its bank, her bare feet trailing in the water. She heard his approach — he could see her shoulders tense — which was impressive as he was very quiet.

He padded up beside her, but did not sit. "Are you still angry with me?" he asked.

"Are you still being an ass?" she responded.

He'd at least three clever remarks for that: flippant, self-effacing, and dismissive. Instead, he knelt beside her, then folded his legs under him.

"I've been… distracted," he said and that, at least, was true. He still was, so near to her. Her skin glowed moon pale in the night. Her hair streamed about her shoulders and made her looked streaked with shadow. She was very beautiful. It had bothered him, once, that he should think so, but there was nothing for it.

"I apologize for any pain I caused you."

She snorted loudly. "You think too highly of yourself." But he could see her features soften.

They both stared out at the stream, the water rushing noisily along its way. She pulled her feet out and he wondered if they'd got cold. Would they feel cold to him, if he were to touch them, to take one in his hand and stroke her sole until she laughed? Or would they feel warm as she always did by his reckoning?

"Today, I did not mean to undermine you," Sif said into the night. When she looked at him her penitence was genuine. She'd understood. How different Asgard was and how alike. How could he not forgive her? How could he even think there something to forgive?

"You Æsir are so puny," he said, flippantly, brushing her apology away, "so it's no wonder you probably never noticed… that on Jötunheimr I am very small."

It'd turned more serious than he meant it, but she only smiled at him softly and he swallowed past a lump in his throat. He could not decipher the look in her eyes as she raised one hand and set her fingertips lightly against his shoulder. She leaned, close enough that he could feel her breath hot on his skin.

Thor trampled noisily through the brush and she leaned back, instantly.

"If you two do not join me," he announced, "I will have all your dinner for myself."

Sif's hand was still on Loki's shoulder and she pushed herself off from it as she stood.

"Leave off of my jerky," Sif said, "or I will roast you like the pig you are!"

She looked back at Loki once before she chased after Thor and he could not tell whether it was apologetic or guilty.


	13. the second summer iii

_iii._

Sif understood desire, or she was familiar with it, at least. She and Auda had a very embarrassing talk long ago and, once, even Frigg had begun to speak to her until Sif begged her please to stop. She was well-used to a particular variety of dreams and whatever happened in the corners of her mind late at night, or under her bedding, had never been a cause for concern. She could not begin to understand, however, what she had nearly done to Loki as they sat beside the stream.

He was so odd, she always thought, so strange. But was that really it? Was it his differences she found fascinating or were they simply easier to parse than Loki himself? The lean muscles of his back and limbs were not different, nor the way errant curls fell against his temples and sometimes across his brow. The way he said her name was, the way _everything_ he said got up under skin; and that was not because he was jötunn, but because he was Loki. He had not been absent from her dreams, she could admit, though it was her policy never to dwell on them. She'd dreamed of blond boys as well, but that didn't mean she felt such things for Thor. Of course, she knew many blond boys and only one jötunn prince who dragged his vowels and had long, graceful fingers.

The court would think she was perverse. It was a sudden realization, and it filled her with anger. All that was perverse was the way that they treated him and his kinsmen — the way they looked at them when they'd done nothing. The vision of her father's fury was, frankly, pleasing, but she waved it away. She would not use Loki that way. Use him. As if he was hers to use.

He'd been touchy as they ate, his barbs sharper, though at least he was no longer treating her as if it pained him to look upon her. His "good night" had been casual enough before he disappeared into his tent. Sif sat up with Thor a while longer, for the most part in comfortable quiet, enjoying the night time sounds of the forest before she absconded to her own tent. Her tent where she lay with her mind racing and refusing to slow down for sleep.

She'd not had extensive experience from which to draw, but she was certain that no good came of attempting to kiss your friends. Was that was Loki was? She'd wanted to call him so that morning when Siggeir and the others were taunting him. No matter how angry she was with Loki — and she had been quite angry — the thought of them trying to hurt him made rage rear up inside her. She would not pretend that it was not caring. He had not been just a foreign visitor for some time. She needed to call him something so, absent any reasonable alternative, friend would have to be it.

She wondered what he would call her, the next morning as they broke their fast. Thor had always been ever more cheerful the closer he woke to dawn, which Sif, a person who preferred more reasonable hours,had always found irritating. He was too concerned with his food and nearly swallowing it all whole, however, to fill the quiet. Loki — whose appetite Sif had often been impressed with given how thin he stayed — concentrated on his food as well, though with significantly less gusto. Thor was enjoying. Loki was brooding. And when they'd finished, he excused himself briefly from breaking down camp.

"Are you shirking so casually?" Sif asked.

"I dropped something, I think," he said evenly. "Last night by the stream."

If it was meant to cut off Sif's challenge at the knees, it did its job. Her ears went hot and she looked to her tent.

"Go get it then instead of making a great to do of it," called Thor, who made a great to do of everything. Thor pulled down his tent, and Sif followed suit. She finished and was kicking dirt on the remains of the fire, and Loki still had not returned. She needed to consider it only briefly, for she had never been a coward. She went after him.

He was standing near the stream, and if he'd really lost something he'd either given it up or found it already because he certainly wasn't looking.

"Are you shirking _now_," Sif asked as she closed on him, "or just being moody?"

He looked at her and she could see something smart building in his throat, to cut, to distance, to avoid. She wasn't sure what gripped her or what she hoped to accomplish exactly, but she was so tired, already, of tip-toeing.

Loki opened his mouth to speak and Sif charged forward and tackled him into the stream. His muscles bunched beneath her as they fell with a great splash, then he flopped around like a fish, gasping. She rolled off of him into the shallows and leaned back to submerge herself before surfacing again. He floated there, his sopping curls dripping down his face and looked at her, aghast.

"You're completely mad," he said and Sif burst into laughter. He cupped one large hand and splashed her quite thoroughly. She coughed at the water in her mouth, then shoved him down. She had mastered dunking Thor who was much heavier than Loki, so he was no challenge. He kicked away from her, slippery, and she gave chase. When he peeked his head above water before pulling her legs out from under her, he was smiling. Thor found them soon and was insulted enough that they'd left him all the work he swore to waterlog them both so thoroughly they'd never dare it again.

It was nearly an hour before they went on their way, though none of them seemed to mind it. The forest spread out wide before them and Sif had no expectation of actually finding the cave Thor sought so hard. It was enough for her to walk with Thor and Loki through the forest, to jeer at Thor's attempts at marching songs and tease Loki for the way he noted down various plants and flowers they passed. But Thor's wishes had always had a way of making themselves reality — he was charmed thus — and it wasn't even afternoon when they stumbled upon it.

It didn't seem much, a stone opening on an incline, set into the ground, but Thor looked at it with his eyes wide in delight. Loki's peaked curiosity was also easily evident. They lit torches and descended. It was musty and smelled of damp, but after the initial slope, the floor was made of carved stone meticulously set. The guttering light of their torches showed walls much the same, though many sections had crumbled and worn away. Insects and vermin skittered about their feet, disturbed by their intrusion.

The long winding tunnel they traveled through was all but featureless, until finally it opened into a cavernous room. There had been no means of egress previously, but now as they held their torches aloft, there were entrances to corridors outlined all along the walls.

"I wonder what this place held?" asked Loki. "Not only the dead, certainly."

"I wonder what it still holds?" Thor said as he moved along the wall nearest them to the closest entryway. It was blocked, they discovered quickly, its ceiling caved in. They continued along the wall, trying each one in turn, but they had all suffered the same fate. Some could not even be entered and other corridors continued a ways before they became impassable.

It was the sixth they tried that went on longest, and it carried them all the way to a thick rock slab of a door, barring them from whatever lay beyond. Thor grinned at Sif and Loki joyously, and Sif helped him feel around for a latch or some mechanism to open it.

"Anything?" asked Loki, not attempting to feign disinterest as would normally be his wont.

"No," said Thor, then cursed. "One thing left." He handed Sif his torch and gestured for her to stand back. Then, he pressed his shoulder to the door and pushed. Sif cast Loki a long-suffering look, which he gamely returned. Moments passed, then a few more; Thor grunted. At last, the door began to moved. Rock scraped against rock and Thor laughed from deep in his belly through his straining. Sif was thinking how unbearable Thor would be for the next few days after bending ancient caves to his will through strength alone when it happened.

Loki heard it first, and Sif heard his sudden intake of breath before she did what had caused it. More rocks shifting, far more than the one slap scraping against the ground.

"Move!" Sif yelled and pulled at Loki, who pulled at Thor, and they all ran. Sif could hardly see where she was going. One of the torches had fallen and the one she still had was going low with her movement and a shower of dirt from above. The light from Loki's flickered in the corner of her eye as he ran at her heels. The sound of crashing behind them was deafening. Then, the ground shifted and Sif was thrown forward.

She hit the ground hard and her breath rushed from her. She'd jammed her shoulder as well and her torch was lost. She sat up, coughing, in the dark, and called out: "Thor! Loki!" but stopped immediately when a nearby mound shifted at the sound.

"Here," came Loki's voice and Sif felt light-headed with relief that he sounded unharmed. She looked towards where the sound had come from and she saw a light. Not torchlight, but something glowing soft and blue-green. It outlined a large hole in the new wall of rubble behind her and Sif crawled to it. They were inside a small hollow and looked up at her, their faces smeared with dirt and dust. Loki had cast a spell and the power from it limned the makeshift walls of their cubby. He'd kept it from collapsing, Sif realized.

"Come on," she said, half inside, "Let's get out of here."

"I'm afraid- that's not quite possible," Thor said, voice pained, and then Sif saw. He was lying on his side, one of his legs visible to the knee and the other not at all, buried as it was under the one-time ceiling of the corridor.

"We'll go get help," Sif said, forcefully.

Loki's voice was quiet and deceptively calm. "If I leave, I'm not certain how long the spell will stay set."

"And if you stay?" Her voice shook, but she did not care.

"I'm still not certain." He smiled raggedly and the light pulsed brighter. She saw then, his fingers dug into the ground where the light was brightest and the strain wrinkling his brow. "So, you should hurry."

He held out his hand towards her suddenly, a bright blue flame flickering in it. Instinctively, Sif reached out and the flame jumped into her hand. It was chilly in her palm.

Sif looked at them both. Sweat beaded on Loki's brow, veins stood out in his neck. Thor's breathing was shallow and his face contorted with pain. She couldn't leave them.

"Sif, please," said Loki, his eyes so red in the darkness.

Sif turned, stumbled her way out of the corridor and ran.

"Heimdall," she said as loudly as she dared once she'd got away from the cavern. "Heimdall!" she called again and again, until she was screaming it as she reached the warm air of the forest once more.


	14. the second summer iv

_iv._

Thor's breathing seemed unnaturally loud and Loki did not know whether to count it a good or a bad thing. Everything seemed loud in this tiny hole he'd dug them. Quick thinking, but not quick enough. He'd considered trying to shift them away, but the prospect of splitting his concentration enough to maintain the stability of their shelter, orient himself properly so that he could calculate where they were versus where they needed to be, and actually put forth the energy required to move himself _and_ Thor- well, it wasn't very hopeful.

No, his hope, their hope, was Sif.

Thor mumbled something and Loki leaned closer so that he wouldn't have to raise his voice.

"What was that?" he asked. Oh, he still didn't like the way Thor's breathing sounded at all.

"I said: thank you," Thor repeated more clearly.

"For foolishly going with you to watch you be crushed in a cave-in?" Loki asked. "You're very welcome."

"You could have left with Sif," he said and Loki realized he was serious. "No one would have blamed you." He smiled. "Now you might be crushed too."

"Well, we've already established that I'm quite foolish," Loki said.

Thor was quiet for a moment. He shifted a bit, then groaned; apparently, it had not worked out well.

"I didn't even think you liked me," Thor admitted. It sounded unbearably unsure for Thor and Loki could not stand it. This was stupid. Stupid just like brash, cocksure, simple Thor who should never, ever, under any circumstance sound so lacking in confidence about something so silly as whether Loki liked him.

"Keep in mind I only say this because you're dying or what have you," Loki said, "and your bursting into sobs might bring the whole place down, but: you're not so easy to dislike as you look."

Thor grinned brilliantly, the idiotic oaf, then said very seriously: "I consider you a true friend as well, Loki."

"Save your breath before the air grows thin," Loki said, though there was little chance of that happening. When Thor did go quiet, eyelashes fluttering dangerously, Loki reconsidered.

"Or at least," he piped up, "speak of something interesting." His vision doubled, suddenly, before righting itself, and the spell flickered. Better for both of them, perhaps.

"Interesting," Thor slurred, then shook his head as if to clear it. His expression went sly, which was a terrible look for Thor.

"Do you like Sif?" he asked Loki directly.

Loki did his best not to sputter, though he failed.

"A fair deal more than I like you," Loki sniffed, attempting haughty. "She's not so stupid as to get stuck under a pile of rocks after all."

"That is not what I meant and you know it," said Thor. "It is fine if you do. I know no few others who do as well." Loki could not help but to frown at that. "Far be it from me to judge what stokes your desire-"

Loki's voice was a touch too loud when he cut Thor off. "You would need to be far closer to death than you are for me to consider having this conversation with you."

"I assure you," Thor said with a grimace, "I want no details."

"There are no-" Loki began then stopped, as he heard footsteps coming closer.

"Sif?" he called, but no, the tread was too heavy. Thor took another rattling breath before Odin Allfather appeared at the hole to their tiny hovel.

His eye fixed on Thor, who greeted him giddily.

"Hello, Father!" he said and when he saw the relief on Odin's face, he patted Loki's shin companionably. "You needn't have worried. Loki stayed with me. He's a good friend."

Odin looked then to Loki, whose own breathing was beginning to become labored. The spell flickered again. Odin leaned back out of the hole and there was a thump — his staff striking the ground, Loki thought. Then, the cave exploded with light. Loki closed his eyes to it and he felt the pull of the Bifröst's power, Asgard's power, Odin's power.

When he opened his eyes, they were in a room in the palace and his haze was shaken away by Thor's agonized scream. He clutched at his leg and people swarmed around him. Odin stood, watching, and Loki had never seen such softness on his face. One of the healing rooms, Loki realized, as he sat up. One of the attendants thought to look to him, but Loki waved her away. He was uninjured. Thor had been placed on a pallet and they all bussed around him. The queen had appeared as well, and gently stroked her son's forehead. Loki felt the strength of their magic and Thor calmed.

Loki looked about the room and saw an unused basin of water. He went to it and, left with nothing else to do, began to wash his face and hands. When he turned again to look at Thor, Odin stood behind him. Loki bowed his head respectfully.

Odin said: "Come with me," then led Loki under a sweeping arch, and out onto the balcony. Asgard sprawled before them.

"You are a fine young man," Odin said. Loki would have appreciated it more if not for the slightest note of surprise. "And I thank you."

"I've hardly done anything," Loki said. He would have asked if Odin had expected him to leave Thor to die, but he didn't need to. It was clear, and it had none of the innocence of Thor's gratitude that Loki should risk himself for someone that he perhaps did not like very well.

"You saved my son's life," Odin said. He paused and Loki let it the silence hang heavy in the air. "I hope," Odin continued, at last, "that you are as good a friend to him when he visits your home, as you have been in his."

Odin did not wait for Loki's response to this concession, so long sought after, this long awaited gesture of trust. Just as well, as there was really nothing Loki wished to say to Odin about it. He stayed on the balcony as Odin went back inside. He was not alone for long, but the next visitor was far more welcome. Sif paced up beside him.

The left arm of her shirt had been ripped away, and bandages covered her shoulder and her bicep. She had not bothered to clean her face, and he was sure she would hurt him severely if he asked whether those were tear tracks through the layer of dust and grime.

"How's Thor?" Loki asked.

"He'll be fine," Sif said. Her relief was palpable. "He'll not be able to go marching off into more danger for a few weeks yet, but it serves him right."

Loki smiled. "I can't disagree."

He glanced at Sif only to find her staring at him, the emotion on her face raw as her eyes bored into his. He thought of them sitting by the stream, the way she'd leaned towards him and then left him wanting, wanting to fall into her, to be consumed. There was more in her eyes now, as if a dam had burst, as if she understood something she hadn't.

Sif threw her arms about Loki's neck, pulled him bodily to her, her embrace as fierce and strong as everything else about her. He stiffened, then leaned into her, returning the hug with his arms wrapped about her back and waist. Her fingers played in the hairs at the nape of his neck, and with his face pressed into her shoulder, he could smell her, just Sif, beneath the layers of muck.

"Odin has said he will send a party to Jötunheimr," Loki announced once Sif finally released him with a punch to his shoulder for good measure.

He tried not to look at her, to ask a question she'd already answered, and in multiple ways by now — even if he still hadn't asked the one that sat heavy in his gut whenever she was near.

"I've never liked the cold," Sif said. "I'll expect one of those massive furry cloaks of yours. What animal do they come from, anyway?"

"An assortment, most of which you've probably never heard of," Loki said, as they looked out over Asgard. "I've such a great deal to show you."


	15. interlude i

**interlude i**

When the Æsir messenger came, it was to Farbauti. She sat on her husband's throne in the center of the keep and received all comers while Laufey toured the mountain villages. The man was young and wore the golden raiment of Odin's guard. He offered Farbauti a message written in his king's hand and cringed back when she stood to take it. She wondered what stories they must tell of her in Asgard that she should be so openly feared. Of how she took Odin's eye, most likely, though she had done far more impressive things in her time, both on and off the battlefield. To his credit, he barely trembled as Farbauti took the missive and scanned its curt message.

Again, Asgard marched on Svartálfaheimr, this time to settle some dispute between the dwarves. It would be of no interest to Jötunheimr at all, if not for the fact that many of the diplomatic representatives Asgard planned to send to them in a steadily shrinking number of days were occupied with the conflict — including their young prince. The visit would thus be postponed.

"We appreciate the consideration," Farbauti dictated to the messenger in his own language. "And we eagerly await word of when we can expect our guests."

The Æsir guard bowed, and two of Farbauti's own guards flanked him as he left the room, leading him through the labyrinthine halls of Gastropnir and back out to where the Bifröst would pluck him up.

Farbauti sat on the throne, thinking. The postponement was a thing of little consequence to her and would be much the same to Laufey. They had both borne far more dire insults at the Æsir's hands, and she would count herself shocked if ever Odin did not find cause to continually insert himself into the affairs of other realms at the least provocation.

No, it was Loki for whom she worried.

He had been everywhere in Gastropnir over the last few weeks, haunting every nook and cranny to make certain the preparations met his approval. All the while, he made a concerted effort to pretend that he wasn't acting like a youth primping and prettying after their first adornment. After the way Loki had behaved when he actually had received his first adornment, Farbauti had despaired that she would never see him in such a state. Now her concern was for whether it might do him harm.

Loki did not speak much of his time in Asgard. Oh, he talked about the architecture and the customs, the great banquets and the rainbow bridge, and never ran out of words for the contents of Odin's library. But he deliberately avoided discussion of how he spent his days and with whom. There was Asgard's golden prince — their association being one of the primary purposes of these efforts — whose company Loki clearly enjoyed more than he would ever admit, but there was someone else as well. Someone who lived in the silences between words and in the far-off look in his eyes. He kept his own counsel in this more than anything else, but Farbauti had her suspicions. She was his mother after all, and he her son — her tiny cub, her little boy so prickly and so sharp.

Farbauti bade the attendants close the doors of the throne room, and left through the back passage that led to her family's chambers. Loki was in his bedroom, where he'd locked himself to study that morning after breaking fast. Whatever he was doing, he did not think Farbauti would find it objectionable, as he did not bother to spell it away before he let her enter.

"Has father returned early?" Loki asked, granting her a glance before returning his attention to his writing.

"No," said Farbauti. "There was a messenger from Asgard."

Loki's pen stuttered; a crooked streak of ink marred the page.

"Oh?" He did not look up.

"They've found trouble to contend with amongst the dwarves. The party cannot come as scheduled."

Carefully, Loki blotted at his pages. His jaw worked and Farbauti could see the tension banded through his narrow shoulders as he fought to stifle his reactions. She and Laufey had agreed to treat with Asgard for the sake of all of Jötunheimr, to ensure the well-being of her people. They understood what was at stake, but it had not occurred to them that yet more would come to hang in the balance.

Their people's future was fragile, but so too, Farbauti now saw, their son's heart, and both were too dearly important to be allowed to come to harm.

"It is only a postponement, of course," Farbauti continued. "When they finish in Svartálfaheimr, they will send word."

Loki forced a smile as he looked at her. "Well, obviously, Mother," he said. "I hardly see what difference another few weeks will make, but thank you for telling me."

Without warning, Farbauti closed the distance between them and leaned over to kiss Loki's brow. Her hand smoothed through his soft curls. He blinked at her. For a single moment, his eyes were wide, his face open, then he closed it again and fidgeted, brushing her away.


	16. summer's end i

**summer's end.**

_i._

The rainforests of Svartálfaheimr sweltered. Sweat got in Sif's eyes, pooled in the crevices of her armor, and made her feel perpetually damp. The terrain itself prevented a full charge, and so their only game was to wait. The conditions on the line they set amongst the thick foliage were little worse than their actual camp: a scant troll outpost, abandoned during Asgard's successful routing years past.

Sif had never enjoyed herself more. Through every challenge, through pain and inconvenience and discomfort, she thought only: _I am here. At last, I am here._

The line shifted, subtly, but Sif could feel it like the head of a wyrm knew the movements of its tail. She looked to Thor, standing with Tyr, who had been chosen to lead this expedition. One of their dwarven allies whispered to them. Thor's shoulders set, energy banded through his limbs wanting to be released and Sif knew: their enemy approached.

She heard them before she saw them. The clan of dwarves they faced, the Daglidi, were the primary breeders of the great dwarven beasts of war. They rebelled now against King Bjornleif, long a friend to the Allfather, because they felt this service should grant them control of the lands abandoned by the decimated trolls. Their leader, Heidrsig, had styled himself king, ending the chance for negotiation. So, they stomped through the jungle, riotous, and clashed with Asgard, ever ready to defend her allies. The ground shook with the fury of their passing.

In the early days of the engagement, they'd used their quicker, more agile creatures, but swift as they were, they were also not hearty enough to challenge the Æsir. Sif and her compatriots batted them away like insects and rodents, and the dwarves were forced to reconsider their approach. They'd since switched to the fiercest of their beasts: each as tall as a horse but twice as thick, boasting razor-sharp hooves and vicious horns. Bjornleif's people had told them the creature's name, but Sif found all attempts to pronounce it hopeless. She knew what was most important: the way they fought. They charged forward and wrecked everything in their path. They'd actually lost a man the first time, a mistake that had not been made again.

The first of the beasts appeared in the distance, the sun glinting off of its sleek coat. A volley of Æsir arrows bloomed from its flesh immediately, and it shrieked its pain as its fellows pounded on past its death throes. The archers readied their bows again as spears, arcing gracefully through the air, met the wave of creatures. The line of warriors split as planned, and Sif darted off to go around the creatures and flank their masters, who prepared to charge in after them.

Thor was just behind her, off to her right side, crashing through the foliage. She did not have to look to know it was him. For all their years together, both at training and at play, they knew each other as well as they knew themselves; going into their first true battle had only seemed to heighten that intimacy, and Sif felt closer to him than she ever had before.

They fell upon the Daglidi as one. Sif and those who had followed behind her cut at their front line, caging them and keeping them from going after the archers and spearmen. Thor carved through to their heart, looking for the general who had accompanied them during all the previous battles. The Daglidi were desperate now; Sif could see it in the way they fought. Their numbers had been drastically lessened since the Æsir stepped into the fray and as their hopes shrank, battle by battle, their units lost cohesion. Even now, while Sif clashed with one of them, dodging and deflecting the heavy swings of his mace, two of his fellows hung back. They would not retreat, but the force with which they wanted to all but paralyzed them, so great was the might of Asgard. So great was the might of Sif.

She bore down on her opponent. Dwarves were stout and well-rooted, so keeping them off balance was of utmost importance. He stumbled and Sif's sword glanced off of his chestplate; Dwarven smithing was too sturdy to submit to any but the most direct strikes. When he regained himself, however, he did not attempt to get back into reach again, only continued circling as he backed away, leading Sif forward. Neither of his companions made to move in.

That was when Sif felt it. The ground vibrated under her feet and, now that she listened for it, she could hear the stomp of massive hooves approaching over the clamor of the battle. Sif backpedalled, calling a warning to the other nearby warriors. The ground had begun shaking in earnest as they scattered. Across the way, Thor had found his opponent, the Daglidi general, out of range of Sif's calls and, hopefully, out of range of the creature baring down on them as well.

The Daglidi too had gone, but not scattered as the Æsir. They knew what to expect and fell back in neat formation to allow their monstrosity to do its work. It crashed through the tree cover with the sound of splintering wood. The others, Sif saw, were naught but babes compared to this horror. It towered, monstrous, its curving horns as thick as Sif's legs. She could stand on Thor's shoulders and still not see over its head. Unlike all the others, it was mounted. A great palanquin was strapped to its back and in it sat a weathered dwarf with thick red hair. The Daglidi's hails rang through the air and Sif knew him: Heidrsig, who would be king.

"Keep it away from the line!" Sif commanded and the others obeyed. She had been granted no official authority, but she had discovered early on that in the heat of battle all that mattered was the strength of her conviction and the quality of her orders.

One massive hoof almost clipped Siggeir, but he dove to safety as the others rallied and began to slice at the creature's legs as they came down. On its back, Heidrsig yelled out invectives, or perhaps commands, in the Dwarven tongue.

Sif looked about and charged for a likely tree. She pulled herself up by a low-hanging branch, her sword shifting at her hip as she jammed her feet against knots in the wood. The creature's horns threatened the nearby trees as it whipped about, attempting to stomp on the annoyances darting around its legs. Sif clutched a branch tight, the rough bark biting into her palm, and braced herself against the trunk. The creature reared up on its hind legs and slammed back down, shaking a shower of leaves from the trees. They fluttered down among Sif's compatriots as they continued to block the beast's progress. Sif jumped.

She landed high on its side, one hand clutching at the harness that held the palanquin in place and the other scrabbling at the creature's wiry hair. Its muscles flexed under her, and pressed close to its side Sif could feel the thundering boom that must have been its heartbeat.

Sif pulled her knife from her boot and began to saw at the straps holding the palanquin to the beast's back. It leaned dangerously as one of the thinner cords gave way, and Heidrsig finally noticed her presence. He hefted his mace and swung it down over the side of his perch. The attempt was feeble as he clearly did not want to risk hitting his mount. Sif sidled out of his range entirely and continued her ascent, grasping only at the creature's hair now. It bit into her hands, bruising, but she did not waver. She crested the beast's spine at last, and Heidrsig spun in his seat to face her. This time his attack was vicious, without concern for the precariousness of their positions. Sif's sword was still sheathed, but she didn't need it.

She dodged a punishing blow, then kicked the side of the basket with all of her strength. Another of the straps she'd sawed at snapped with a loud crack, and the entire palanquin slid down, hanging at a sharp angle from the beast's side. The frayed lines and accoutrement tangled about Heidrsig, and he dangled from his seat, struggling to free himself without tumbling to the ground head first.

The creature bellowed, feeling the shifting of its burden, and Sif knelt close to its spine, riding out its flailing. On the ground, its legs were still beset by Æsir swords, joined now by arrows and spears, most bouncing off, but some managing to make nicks in the thick hide.

Sif crawled towards the head. The moment she touched the base of its neck it began, furiously, to buck. Sif wrapped an arm around one of its great, curly horns and held fast. Her feet were planted against its skull and she drew her sword. Precision would be required, but Sif had never lacked there. Between heartbeats, she drove her sword up to the hilt into the beast's left eye.

Its thrashing went frantic and twitchy. Below, everyone retreated as it began to teeter on its enormous legs. Sif leapt from its head as it fell, and rolled onto the loamy, forest floor.

The crash as it hit the ground was deafening; the force of it jarred her teeth. Sif rushed forward amongst the cheers from the Æsir to retrieve her sword. It came free with a wet pop and she wiped the gore from it onto the beast's fur. Then she looked to Heidrsig.

He had only just escaped being crushed by the fall of his mount. He had not, however, escaped the mangled remains of his palanquin. He was knotted up with it, and two jagged pieces impaled his torso. His teeth gritted against the pain, stained red by the blood that filled his mouth from his internal injuries.

"I can ease your passing," Sif said as she approached. "In honor of a battle well-fought."

His breath rattled and he spat out blood around something in his own language. A curse, Sif assumed from his tone.

"What do you know of honor, Æsir dog?" he said then in her language, and Sif's grip tightened on her sword. The hilt dug into the fresh cuts on her palms. "You defend those who would treat us as slaves."

Sif stepped closer, glaring, before she had a chance to consider that she was allowing herself to be goaded by a dying enemy.

"That is your story. That does not make it true."

"And who decides what story is true?" he rasped. "You? Your Allfather?"

"Quiet!" Sif warned, though she didn't know what threat could she truly levy at a dying man; a man whose dreams were dying with him. The others were still jubilant as they clashed with the stragglers; the hum of their excitement got up under her skin and made it tingle. Most of the Daglidi were finally retreating now. No one could have missed their king's fall.

"You do not belong here," Heidrsig continued, fiercely. "That is truth. It is not your fight. It never was."

His face twisted in agony, and, unable to stand it any longer, Sif slid her blade swiftly between his ribs. His expression went slack, eyes glassy. She thought they still held accusation, but that was only in her mind.

Thor called her name, joyous, and Sif forced herself to look away from Heidrsig's corpse and turn, as well, from the doubts creeping up like weeds, fouling her moment of triumph.


	17. summer's end ii

_ii._

The throne room was packed tight the day they took their oaths. There were nearly a dozen of them lined up to swear their service to the throne, but the spectators looked only to Sif and Thor. He was the prince of all Asgard, expected since he was but a babe to do great things. And she, well, she was the young maiden who dared to think herself a mighty warrior. Who dared to think it and then dared to prove it, when all others fell back and she alone dealt the killing blow to their fiercest enemy.

Sif had played spectator for scores of ceremonies just the same as this one. She'd stood mouthing along as the warriors took their oath: sacrifice, responsibility, duty, honor. To guard and protect. To preserve peace. For the good of all the Nine Realms.

"I swear!" she yelled in unison with her compatriots as they knelt before the Allfather's throne.

"Then, rise, noble warriors of Asgard," said Odin. "And take up your weapons."

They did rise, as they were told, and waited for their weapons to be brought to them. It was tradition that in celebration of taking their oaths, a newly minted warrior was presented with an equally new weapon. It was usually commissioned by the man's family from the most expensive smith they could afford and much was often made over whose was the finest. Fathers and elder brothers and uncles began to come forth to present gleaming swords and spears, brutal maces and axes, to the others. Odin himself came forth for Thor. He descended from his golden throne and tapped Gungnir on the ground at the foot of the stairs. A pedestal rose from the floor and a hush fell over the room. Mjölnir, the legendary hammer, commander of lightning and storms, was set there and Thor looked at his father.

"My son," said Odin, and it did not matter that they were in the middle of a throne room brimming with their subjects: this was a private moment. "You have proven yourself worthy of a weapon without equal."

Thor's pride was nearly blinding in its intensity. He reached for the hammer and lifted it over his head and into the air with a primal shout. The cheers and applause broke out immediately. The other new warriors were still being presented with their own weapons, but no one could help but grant Thor and his extravagant prize at least some of their attention. An ancient weapon forged in the heart of a dying star was unorthodox for these proceedings, but Thor was not and never had been like anyone else.

There was no one to stand for Sif. Her brother could not leave his post; she wasn't certain if her father had come at all. The battlemaster was to bring her a sword from the armory. One much the same had served her well on Svartálfaheimr. A warrior, as she was now truly, finally, did not indulge in self-pity. Especially without good reason. She straightened her shoulders. She did not heed the others as they tested their new weapons.

She looked away too from Thor, swinging Mjölnir above his head with no regard for the fact that they were still inside. Thunder cracked in the distance. More approached to bring weapons, but it was not the battlemaster who came towards Sif.

Auda stood out as she marched along with those coming to present weapons, even moreso than Sif did in the line with her fellow warriors. Sif, at least, was fully armored and quite tall for a girl. No one would ever mistake her for otherwise, but she was a different creature entirely than petite Auda in her lovely red gown, moving among the men, most warriors themselves, hefting large and impressive weapons. Auda carried only a small shield, half again as large as the bucklers they used when they trained with maces and clubs.

Auda stopped in front of Sif and offered her the shield with a grin. Still stunned into silence, Sif accepted it. It was light for a shield, though still extremely sturdy. It was weighted oddly, though, and Sif discovered why when she turned it over. There was a hilt, nearly as long as the shield itself strapped to its underside. They matched, made from the same rarified metal, though the hilt was embellished with red. Sif brushed her fingers across the markings on one end and a shining, curved blade launched forth, making a glaive. She repeated the motion at the other end and the blade's twin appeared. Sif touched another and the hilt grew longer in her hands. Another and both blades retracted again. The runes ran up and down the entire hilt, dozens yet carefully seared into it that she had not touched. She'd seen the like often in her weeks on Svartálfaheimr. Dwarven craftsmanship was without equal. No one but Thor and his Mjölnir could boast a weapon half so magnificent as this.

Sif looked at Auda, mouth slack. Auda lightly touched her arm.

"I'm not an expert," Auda said. "But I was made to understand that it's very versatile. A perfect fit for one with such diverse skills as Lady Sif."

"Do you like it?" Thor asked eagerly. Sif started at the sound of his voice, and twisted about to meet his eyes.

"What do you think?" she asked indignantly, her cheeks hurting with her grin.

"I'm glad," Thor declared with a laugh, but it was past him, beyond the foot of the dais where Sif saw the true culprit. Frigg met her eyes, a small smile on her face, and nodded at Sif just once.

Eyes burning, Sif turned back to Auda, who moved closer and, careful of Sif's shield and glaive, wrapped her in a hug.

"I am so very proud of you," said Auda. Auda who so rarely spoke of herself, of her feelings as opposed to Sif's or to Stigandr's, who never said 'I' if 'we' could suffice. She buried her face in Auda's shoulder so no one could see it as it crumbled.

The feast after the ceremony was rowdier than usual, the product of combining elated young warriors with large stores of ale. They'd got loud enough that when Sif made her way to Frigg, they had to raise their voices to be heard over the ruckus.

"I don't know how to thank you," Sif said. She never had.

"You just did," Frigg replied, smiling. "Don't worry over it. A proper warrior needs a proper weapon. I've been your patron all this time, I certainly couldn't abandon you now."

"But of Dwarven make," Sif said. Dwarves knew secrets of smithcraft passed down for countless millennia. They rarely forged things for outsiders, and when they did they were the sorts of things that usually ended up in the Allfather's vault.

"I asked a favor in honor of long friendship," Frigg said. "King Bjornleif was happy to comply. When I told him whom it was for, he enlisted his personal weaponsmith. I believe he feels that you, particularly, did him a great service."

The revelation sank heavy in Sif's gut, but she could not call it a surprise. She had murdered his rival, a man who sought to depose him. What could be more worthy of reward?

"Thank you," Sif said uselessly and forced her smile not to falter for another long moment. Surely, there was no reason for it.

She must have failed because Frigg studied her carefully and then said: "It can be difficult I've noticed, to come back from the heights of battle. Especially the first."

Across the way, Thor had made his way on top of the table and was launching into an extraordinarily off-key marching song.

"For some more than others," Frigg added. "Though I suppose you'll have ample new excitement soon enough."

The lack of excitement away from the battlefield was far from what troubled her, but her pleasure at Frigg's reminder was not feigned. When they had been called to Svartálfaheimr, Sif was more conflicted about it than she ever would have thought possible. Not about the battle itself — not then — but its timing. It had been less than a week before they were scheduled to journey to Jötunheimr. She'd viciously set it aside. Any distraction was dangerous in battle. Even still, late at night in their meager camp, her thoughts would not be tamed.

She missed Loki with such force that nothing but the promise of her life's ambition could soothe the sting of having to wait even longer to see him again. Thor had declared hours ago, in a voice that rang through the hall, that they should leave tonight for Jötunheimr. That was not feasible, but Sif smiled, warmth in her chest, that Thor should feel as she did.

Well, perhaps not _exactly_ as she did. Those last weeks of Loki's most recent summer visit had been unlike any time he had spent on Asgard before.

Thor's convalescence after nearly getting his leg taken off robbed Sif of her best friend and Loki of his designated escort. Disallowed to spent more than a few hours of any given day at Thor's bedside, Sif and Loki spent their time together instead.

It was not that they had never been alone before. There had been those weeks during his first visit, when she sat with him in the library nearly every night. But that was furtive, a hesitant exploration, and Sif had not known then why she felt so compelled to be near him.

They had acted no differently — except, perhaps, that Loki spoke more often of Jötunheimr — but something had changed between them. Something new and fragile had come to rest in the way they looked at each other, in the comfortable silences that fell in their conversations, and they both even breathed more lightly so as not to risk disturbing it.

He'd said a private farewell to her before he left, which he had not before. He'd also seemed at a loss for words, standing there in a corner of the gardens: another first. Sif wished him well and he did the same. Then he just stared at her — and she at him — before eventually conjuring a wreath of sparkling, translucent flowers, which he placed in her hair. Sif touched them and they were smooth and cool beneath her fingertips, as if blown from glass.

"Not exactly the stars," Loki had said. "But they'll keep until we see each other again."

Sif looked at him quizzically and asked, for it was ever a danger: "Are you making fun of me?"

"No," he'd said very seriously, and then looked quite embarrassed.

She'd worn the wreath to his official leave-taking and it had sat on the vanity in her bedroom since, just as cold and perfect as the day he set it on her brow.

"I look forward to the trip very much," Sif said to Frigg. The queen's eyes were shrewd, but she made no comment. Not on that at least.

"You have visitors," Frigg said instead. Sif turned to look where she indicated and saw Auda approaching with Stigandr in tow. Morbid curiosity could have brought him to the ceremony, but not to the banquet. Sif had not seen him near Auda earlier. Perhaps this was the only moment of acknowledgement Sif _or_ Auda would get. Frigg squeezed Sif's hand firmly, then took her leave as Sif's father and Auda made it to them.

Auda smiled at Sif encouragingly, but Sif could not muster one in return. She looked only to her father, immaculate as always, his stare as hard as steel.

"Sif," he said evenly.

"Father," she replied. They were the first words they had spoken to each other in years.

He paused, struggling, then finally: "We have allowed childish stubbornness to rule for too long," and she did not ask whether he meant his or hers, "I must admit that I was wrong. It seems you have made something of yourself after all." _Not something appropriate_ went unsaid, but could still be heard, punctuating every word.

"Yes," said Sif. "I have."

"I had not thought it a particularly efficient method," he continued, "but there is a security, it seems. And it puts you in better position than I assumed."

Sif gaped at him, and he did not pause. Why should he? Stigandr had never been able to abide a world that was not to his specification, and when things moved beyond his limited conception, he ignored them.

"I have seen the way your… compatriots look at you. Even if you insist on refusing the most obvious option, there are more than I would have expected."

He likely would have continued in that manner, assuming that with his grudging acceptance she would welcome his counsel, his commands, back into her life, but he was cut off by Sif's bark of laughter. He stared at her, confused, but Auda looked wary.

"You will never change will you?" Sif asked.

Stigandr began to speak again, confusion becoming umbrage, but Sif did not need his answer. She didn't need anything from him anymore.

"I will _never_ marry," she said to him directly. "I will never grant you an alliance. I will never bring you connections. So, from now on, if you wish to improve your position, you will have to do it on your own merits. Allfather help you."

Sif turned to Auda and hugged her, quick and tight.

"Thank you again for everything," she said. "I'll write you as soon as I return from Jötunheimr."

Then, she walked away, ignoring her father calling after her.

Thor had got down from the table and rushed to Sif when he saw her approach. He swept her up in his arms, spinning her about.

"Sif!" he cried, his face flushed with joy and ale, and his mood, as it so often was, infectious. "Lady Sif! The Mighty Sif! Are you ready for our greatest adventure?"

She had just gotten what she'd always wanted, what she had dreamed of since she was a little girl, and he had been there, not a rock but a mountain in support of her the entire time. And now, he would keep her at his side as she went far and wide — perhaps, she hoped, to seek new desires.

Sif's heart near burst with affection for him, and she kissed his brow. Thor looked confused, but pleased, and Sif wrapped her arms about his neck and buried her face in his shoulder, her feet still dangling above the ground. Thor was never one to question a hug, and he returned it with fervor, spinning again as he laughed.

"Yes," Sif said into his hair. "I am ready."


	18. summer's end iii

_iii._

The bite of a midsummer evening in Jötunheimr could put the coldest winter in Asgard to shame. The thick cloaks and fur-lined garments they wore seemed but a pittance. The power of the Bifröst still thrummed in her skull, setting her teeth vibrating, when Sif began to shiver. Beside her, Thor crossed his arms over his chest, warming his hands in the folds of his elbows. The rest of their party, a baker's dozen, looked no more comfortable. A vast broken city spread out before them, its jagged black spires jutting into the sky, some so high as to gouge the clouds. Long shadows darker than the evening sky fell over the cracked and uneven ground, which was coated in thick ice. There was not a sign of movement as far as the eye could see.

It was a dead place. For a single, wild moment, Sif's heart clenched in her chest, and a cry to Heimdall to bring them back, away from this landscape of nightmares, rose up in the back of her throat. Then, from the west, people approached. They were not a large retinue, but their tall figures cut through the barren night. Three of the largest bears Sif had ever seen trailed them, so snowy white they seemed to glow. When they came closer the huge sleds the bears were pulling became visible. So too did who was leading the group. Loki's slender face, his bright eyes and straight nose, chased every other thought from Sif's mind until he stood in front of them and offered a genteel bow.

"My friend," roared Thor, and wrapped Loki up in his arms. Loki allowed this without comment, and the other Jötnar only stood silent near the sleds.

"Welcome to Jötunheimr," Loki said once Thor released him, and his eyes went to Sif, the corners of his mouth quirking up.

"And what a fine place it is," said Fandral drily under his breath. Next to him, Hogun cast him a withering look. They had been chosen first amongst the warriors sent along both as scions of Asgard and guards for the prince and handful of noblemen who were either unlucky or adventurous enough to have been selected for the journey. Technically, Sif herself counted amongst the warriors, but she had not had to vie for the honor. Thor only cited the personal invitation she received from Loki and the matter was settled.

If Loki heard Fandral, he did not make any indication, still looking at Sif as he was. Underneath the hood of her cloak, the wreath he'd made her sat lightly against her brow. Thor cleared his throat and Loki's eyes snapped away.

"If you'll all follow me," Loki said and gestured towards the sleds.

"We enjoy a good walk," he continued conversationally to Thor, "but I didn't think that would be quite so enjoyable for you without proper attire."

The scoff at Asgard's idea of cold weather wear was implied. The sleds, with their high, curved sides, each fit half a dozen Æsir easily, though, Sif imagined, they would fit a few less Jötnar. The others who had come with Loki directed the rest of Thor and Sif's party to the sleds, splitting them between two, but Loki himself guided Sif and Thor to the last. The sled was stacked with thick furs and when they sat down — Mjölnir, attached to Thor's belt, thumping against the seat — Thor cast one over himself and Sif with comical swiftness.

"Chilly, are you?" Sif asked, taunting. Thor harrumphed and knocked his knee into hers. Sif pinched his thigh. Loki's face went tight at the commotion under the furs, but corrected itself just as quickly as he slid in on Sif's other side.

"I'm glad to see we're all as dignified as ever," Loki said smoothly, not looking at either of them. His leg pressed near to Sif's, the fur a barrier between them. Thor looked ready to yank it up to his chin, though his pride would not allow it. Sif shifted and stretched out her elbow, lifting the edge of the fur, then dropping it again so that it fell over Loki's leg as well. Her thigh moved against his.

"I'm not cold," Loki said. Sif's heart beat in her throat as his cheek creased in a smile. He'd gotten more adornments again. This time they were a pair of smooth lines curving out from his temples and bisecting his cheekbones. They cast into even sharper relief the complex geometry of his face. They made him even more beautiful.

"Don't boast," Sif said. Underneath the warm tent made by the fur, she could feel the brisk coolness of his hand where it rested on his leg, just across from her hand on her own leg. She could reach out her fingers and trace them along his wrist.

One of the other Jötnar steadily loaded the effects Sif and company had brought along into the other half of the sled, moving the large chests and trunks as if they were feather light. When he finished, he sat on the wide lip at the front of the sled and picked up the long reins attached to the bear's harness. He barked out a command and the sled surged forward with a jerk. Whether Loki grabbed Sif's hand to steady her or whether she grabbed his hand to steady herself she could not say, but in either case, as the sled settled into its pace, neither of them let go.

They cut a winding path through the city. Up close it did not look so frightening, but mournful and melancholy. The shattered structures and vast emptiness were like the skeleton of a once-great beast. The force of the wind as they traveled was too loud for them to speak easily, so Sif watched Loki's face instead. His expression was placid; familiarity left the surroundings unexceptional to him. The Jötnar's city had fallen at the end of the last war. Loki would only have been a baby then, as Sif had. Much as she could only create fancies about what the city must have been before, Loki too had never seen it but as ruins. Sorrow welled up inside of her, but it felt hollow. It was not her city or her realm. Her people had laid siege to it and cast it down. How could she know or decide the truth of his suffering — of their suffering? Sif squeezed Loki's hand more tightly and, hesitantly, he ran his thumb along the backs of her knuckles.

Eventually the city dropped away and they burst onto a great plain of snow. Mountains jutted up in the distance, and to the east a forest loomed. Their destination blended in with the scenery such that Sif did not see it until they were nearly upon it. A towering wall of ice stretched out across the plain. They barreled through the open gates into a vast courtyard where, at last, dark earth peeked out from beneath the ice and snow. Beyond the yard, there was another wall, circling a huge castle, nearly as wide as it was tall, reinforced with hard, black ice.

"Gastropnir awaits," Loki said quietly, then finally released Sif's hand as they made their way out of the sled.

Inside, the castle was surprisingly temperate. It was no sweltering tropic, but the chilly halls were nothing compared to the bitter cold they'd just left behind. This was made even more remarkable by the fact that upon closer inspection, the castle was not just reinforced with ice, but was constructed from it. It was shaped into smooth walls and curved ceilings that shined in the light from the blue and green flames set on sconces all about, cold to the touch but strong as steel.

Sif pulled back her hood, the leaves of Loki's wreath tangling in her hair. Loki gaped at her, then quickly looked away, mastering himself. His penchant for containing his emotions still had not changed, nor did Sif expect it to do so. She counted it a triumph nonetheless.

The others filed inside, then Loki led them all through the winding halls of his home. There were people everywhere: elderly men and women shuffling about, youths herding gaggles of young children, all busily seeing to their own business. Many watched them as they passed, some also inclining their heads towards Loki in respect, but overall their party was not given much regard. The Jötnar that populated the palace treated them, at most, as a brief point of interest before getting on with more important things. In Asgard, the visiting Jötnar had been the center of all attention for the breadth of their stay and most certainly upon their arrival. So little of that attention had been positive, or even neutral, however. Sif could not claim to long for similar.

The halls twisted and diverged in incomprehensible ways, but Loki, of course, glided along confidently. He brought them to a large pair of doors thrown upon to reveal a dining hall and here, at last, waited the manner of reception Sif had expected.

The room was not even half the size of the great hall in the Allfather's palace. Its tables were large and round, not rectangular, and had indentations in the middle where small pits of that same oddly colored flame flickered. The great hall in Asgard had a sense of majesty, and of distance. This felt strangely… close. Even so, the room was clearly filled with every jötunn of import — Sif was beginning, quickly, to recognize the ways they indicated differences in station — the eldest among them with almost every visible bit of skin covered in adornments. A hush fell as Loki passed the threshold. Every eye was on the Æsir.

Side by side, at the table in the center of the room, sat who could be none other than Laufey and Farbauti. Sif could see Loki in them. The King of Jötunheimr's aspect was severe, almost alien in its harshness, but the sharp planes of his face still spoke of Loki, who was so familiar. Sif saw even more in Farbauti's huge eyes and handsome features, and especially in the mass of curly black hair falling about her shoulders.

Loki led them all straight through the hall, weaving around the the circular tables, to stand opposite his parents, who were alone at their table. He swept into an exaggerated bow and Farbauti pursed her lips, the corners of her mouth trembling. Laufey looked less amused, but it was Farbauti who spoke to their son.

"Introduce our guests, if you would," she said, her posture casual as she sat in her high-backed chair. It was carved out of smooth ebony and had fearsome designs on the sides. Not a throne, but nearly. It matched Laufey's perfectly.

Loki beckoned Thor forward first and he came, back straight and head held high. Mjölnir hung at his hip.

"It is my honor," Loki said. "To introduce: Thor Odinson, Prince of Asgard."

Thor bowed with grace, a polite smile fixed on his face. To Sif he was just Thor, big, loud, so-often-ridiculous Thor, and so it was easy to forget how well-mannered he had been trained to be. Loki nodded almost imperceptibly in approval. He directed Thor to a seat at the table, off to Laufey's right, then he turned to introduce the rest of the party.

His eyes fell first on Sif and he waved her over. She stared at the gentle sweep of his hand and, for a fleeting instant, thought that he might take hers and lead her forward, but it passed. Loki, his gaze flickering to her eyes and then away, balled his fist and let it drop to his side. Sif took three quick steps to fill the space before anyone could pay it too much mind.

"May I present: Lady Sif Stigandsdottir, noble warrior of Asgard."

Sif bowed. When she raised her head again Farbauti's expression was appraising and Laufey looked more interested than he had yet. Sif's eyes darted to Loki, questioning, but she remembered herself and looked away again before she could see any answer he might give. Had he spoken of her to his parents? She flushed to think of it, and moved more swiftly than was strictly dignified to take her seat at the table, uncomfortable under Farbauti and Laufey's scrutiny.

Loki introduced the rest without incident and then took his seat between Sif and Thor. The feast began in earnest then, though as the night progressed Sif found it seemed less what she thought of as a feast than it did an appointment to dine with the royal family. It was extended to far more people than Sif had seen done in Asgard, but the atmosphere was the same. That was, however, no insult against the meal.

They brought it out in parts. There were thick stews that spread warmth through her entire body, set to simmer in the center of the tables. Laden plates of roasted meat followed. Some she could identify like venison and pork, and some she could not — an extremely tender cut of something with an almost chalky texture upon chewing that she didn't like and a soft, stringy affair served with root vegetables that she very much did.

A few seats down from her Fandral bemoaned that Volstagg would be devastated to miss this, but his jest did little to hide his genuine distress. As a young man just sworn into service, Volstagg had taken up arms in the Allfather's name and marched against Laufey's people. He would never be allowed on Jötunheimr. Hogun and Fandral strongly considered turning down the assignment out of solidarity, but Volstagg had encouraged them against it. They'd spoken of it during dinner one night and Sif could not help but to eavesdrop. It was more important, Volstagg said, that they do what they could to make sure a war such as that never happened again, than to worry over his suffering its consequences.

By the time dessert had been brought out — a selection of fruits, puddings, and a creamy frozen confection of which Sif had never seen the like — people had begun to mill around, visiting each other at their respective tables. No few of the Jötnar who had traveled to Asgard, among them the sage Leikr and the old advisor Mimir, came over to greet Thor, Sif, and the other Æsir politely. The acknowledgment was not much, but it did its part to make them feel more comfortable.

Conversation over dinner had consisted of niceties, discussion of the dishes and Gastropnir itself, of things to see and places to visit. But Laufey was curt and Farbauti's gaze so very fierce.

Loki had spent no small amount of time smiling at Sif as she tucked into her food. After finishing with the second of a red-orange fruit out of which you were meant to scoop the sweet, mushy insides with a spoon, she went for another cut of meat. Loki, at last, ceased holding his tongue.

"You're enjoying yourself, I take it?" he asked before taking an excessively dainty sip of his drink.

"Yes, I am," Sif said, head high as she met his eyes, grinning. His expression was sly.

"I'm happy you find our fare adequate." He sniffed as he said it, but there, in the twitch of his fingers, the way he turned his chin up, was the truth. He was as happy as he said.

"You shouldn't take too much credit. You didn't go on the hunt."

Both Sif and Loki looked to Farbauti — Loki chagrined and Sif surprised. She should not have been. Farbauti had been watching them all evening.

"It is our custom, Lady Sif," Farbauti explained, "that a good host should hunt the meat for their guest's table. But my son has an aversion to hunting, so he did you a disservice."

Farbauti could have been teasing, but Sif could not read her so easily as Loki. She was not like the tales, no more than Loki had been — though _he_ had never been mentioned specifically — but she was formidable nonetheless.

"Mother, please," Loki said, rolling his eyes. It was nearly a whine, and Sif smiled down at her plate.

"I really don't care who hunted the meat," Sif said, taking pity on Loki and the little wrinkle between his brows.

Farbauti leaned back in her chair.

"No, I don't suppose you would." Acutely, Sif felt her error. Her eyes darted to Loki — for guidance, perhaps, she was not sure. He was watching his mother warily as she spoke.

"Once, we had legions of hunters, and it was acceptable for any one of them bound to a house to hunt for it." Beside Farbauti, Laufey sat stone still. Thor was saying something to him that Sif could not quite make out but she got the impression his attention had turned to his wife. "Now we are few enough that no house need worry about an excess of those in that trade or any other. Even children like my boy are expected to hunt for themselves because there are not enough skilled elders to do so for them."

At first, Sif thought only of all the wizened Jötnar she had seen as they made their way to the dining hall, and all of those, bent and wrinkled, that were still present. Then the problem struck her. She had indeed seen so many who were very old and even more who were young — Loki's age, some a bit older, stampedes of those much younger — but there was one adult Jötnar in their middle years to be found for every dozen of the others.

There was what Farbauti was not saying, what lived in every quiet moment and every stare, averted or met with challenge: the war. Her peers, her husband's peers, an entire generation of Jötnar had been demolished in the last war. Now the scant few left strained to hold their kingdom together as they waited for their children to grow.

"I'm hardly a child," Loki interjected.

"You're my child," Farbauti responded, dismissively. "Go on, then, finish tormenting your guest."

Sif wished she could recall if Farbauti had referred to anyone else present specifically as Loki's guest. Beside her, Loki shifted in his chair. A minor adjustment, but Sif recognized it for the discomfort it was. He'd looked back to her, something to distract or defuse building in his throat, then a young jötunn woman approached them. The front of her long silvery hair was pulled back from her face and the sides of her head were shaved to make way for the adornments that traced along back from her temples and over her ears. She narrowed her eyes at Loki, her smirk predatory; it rendered her no less pretty.

"Good evening, Skadi," he said, casually.

She responded in the Jötnar language; her tone was inquisitive.

Loki's reply was curt and in Æsir.

"Yes," he said, with an edge of warning.

This Skadi seemed undeterred. She leaned across his chair, face close to his ear as she continued, still in no language Sif could understand. Loki's response this time was also in Jötnar, but Sif recognized the cadence of one of his clever retorts. Skadi fired back immediately, with the ease of long practice, and Loki looked briefly struck. Sif bristled. Then, Skadi looked at her.

She spoke, still in Jötnar, clearly about Sif, but not to her. The mockery was plain. Loki's response cracked through the air like a whip and at last the smirk fell from Skadi's face. Shock turned into suspicion as she continued to look at Sif. Then, just as Sif was about to protest this entire display, Loki switched back to Æsir.

"If you don't mind not being rude for once, Skadi, I prefer to speak so that everyone present can understand." Thor was still engrossed in conversation with Laufey; the warriors on Sif's other side were talking across the table at a few of their friends. No one was paying attention to this exchange but Sif.

Skadi looked at Loki, then back at Sif and a carefully neutral expression slid onto her face.

Her accent was thick, but still understandable when she said: "My apology, Lady Sif." Then, she sketched a little bow and swept away.

Loki had turned his attention fixedly back to his plate, spooning himself more stew.

"Your _friend_?" Sif asked him, unperturbed by his obvious disinclination to discuss it.

"Yes, after a fashion, anyway," he allowed.

"What did she say just then?"

He looked at her and seemed to disapprove of her expression.

"Nothing worth repeating," Loki replied casually. "Would you like some more?" he added, offering her the tureen.

She waved the savory dish away irritably.

"It didn't sound like nothing."

"Well, you couldn't understand so how would you know?"

For that, Sif shoved his shoulder. Some soup slopped over the edges of the tureen and onto his hand. It dripped onto the table. He glared at her, unconvincingly Sif thought, and sighed in a profoundly put-upon manner.

"I thought you said you weren't going to be rude," Sif said, attempting another tactic.

"No, I asked Skadi not to be rude to you," he countered as he cleaned his hand. "I'm perfectly all right with it."

"And I'm perfectly all right with punching your nose in." It was a lie. She quite liked his nose the way it was.

"Please, Sif," he said, voice low as he leaned just slightly closer to her. "Not in public."

Sif felt her ears immediately grow hot; her ire split between Loki for trying such a thing and herself for the fact that it worked. She scowled at him and stuffed a cut of meat viciously into her mouth. He dutifully attempted to catch her eye for the next few minutes, his countenance betraying both smug delight and genuine apology. Sif ignored him until he silently slid her his serving of flavored ice, at which point she decided, magnanimously, to forgive him.

As the evening wound down, they spent the remainder engaged in a spirited argument with Thor over the best range weapons. The three all bid their respects and goodbyes to Laufey and Farbauti at once, as Sif and Loki were needed to help Thor to his room. He had not taken warnings about the potency of Jötnar cider so seriously as he should have.

The room Loki directed them to was large and invitingly decorated, with sturdy furniture carved out of ebony and its own hearth, glowing with blue flame. They dumped a giggling and half-asleep Thor into a huge bed covered with soft furs much like the ones that had been in the sled they took to Gastropnir. Sif's room, down the hall, was identical when Loki threw open the door for her. She didn't go in, though, instead standing at the threshold with him, indecisive. The air around them had grown still and thick, the same way it had so often in those last days he was in Asgard; the way it had in the garden when he'd said goodbye.

"I haven't officially congratulated you," Loki said. He traced one finger briefly across the top of her shield, still strapped to her back. "The enchantments are excellent work. Though I suppose that's to be expected from a king's personal craftsman."

The letter Thor had sent Loki attached to the announcement of their imminent arrival had contained more details than he initially let Sif know, then. Words burned on her tongue, words that she hadn't said to anyone, not even Thor. _I didn't ask for it. It feels so heavy to me._

_I don't want it._

But that was not true. She did want it. It was all she had ever wanted, but she had also wanted it to be different. Loki tilted his head slightly as he studied her, sensing her discomfiture. A ringlet popped out from behind one of his ears and fell along his temple. There was yet more for Sif to want now.

She said: "I'll allow it to pass."

His smile, his real smile, was brilliant.

"I'm glad to hear it."

"I don't think your mother likes me," Sif blurted then. Loki's eyes widened and she wished she could take it back; not because it didn't concern her but because she wasn't certain if it should. And if it did, should Loki know that it did?

Whatever his initial reaction, he took it in stride as he leaned, just so, against the doorjamb.

"She doesn't know you," he assured her. "Things would have gone far differently, believe me, if she disliked you."

"And Skadi?" Sif asked.

Loki sighed heavily. He let his head fall back against the door; the column of his throat stretched on forever.

"Tell me what she said," Sif demanded, relentless.

"She asked whose woman you were," Loki admitted finally. "She said that to be the one female Æsir to come along, you must belong to someone. 'That's how they work, isn't it?'" He pitched his voice higher on the last.

Sif clenched her teeth, biting down her anger. She knew now why Loki had not wished to tell her, though she was not sorry that he had.

"And what did you tell her?" Sif asked carefully.

"I told her," Loki said, meeting her eyes, "that you don't belong to anyone. No more than she does."

Sif rushed forward with her next question, her last question, before she could reconsider.

"And to whom does she _not_ belong?" It was silly to ask, silly to think, but there was no helping it. It churned inside of her gut. There were so many things that still had not been said between them. How could she know? How could she be sure? Skadi was very pretty and, Sif could tell, very like him.

"His name is Ivarr," Loki said immediately, calm and casual as a spring stroll. "He's a hunter, like her. One of the best in a long while, in fact. Not so good as Skadi, but then few are. They'll probably marry within the next few seasons once their parents have been consulted.

"I can attempt to get you an invitation if you like," he finished with a smile.

"Shut up," Sif said and bowed her head so he could not see her own smile — silly relief and fondness married in turn of her lips.

His posture went stiff, his eyes on the crown of her head. Sif began to reach a hand up, curious, until she remembered the wreath still affixed there.

"You kept it," Loki said, almost feeble.

"You already knew that," Sif replied gently.

He reached out his hand towards it slowly and ran his thumb across one of the perfect blooms. His other fingertips ghosted along the wispy locks near her hairline.

"It's a sloppy effort, really. I can change it. Make you something better," Loki said. "Something more… worthy."

Sif batted his hand away.

"Don't you dare," she said. "This is mine. Change your own things."

He pursed his lips to one side, then let them flatten out. One day she would learn them all: every last one of the smiles he wouldn't let show.

"What do you think?" he asked then. His voice was quiet, his eyes round as he looked at her. He didn't mean the wreath or the room or even the dinner.

This was his home.

"It's very… warm," Sif said. She would never have imagined so before, never have thought to describe it thus until she said it, but it was true.

He breathed in, shoulders squared. His brow knit with consideration and Sif thought to move closer, to surge towards him. At the end of the hallway where it crossed with another, two small children ran past chased by their harried older brother. Loki backed away.

"Good night, Lady Sif," he said softly, and bowed at the waist.

"Good night," she replied. He turned on his heel and moved swiftly down the corridor, one hand coming up to run through his hair.

Sif took a deep breath as she watched him, then let it out. She closed her door behind her as he disappeared around the bend, and wondered how exactly she would get to sleep.


	19. summer's end iv

_iv._

It should have been no surprise to Loki that the first thing Thor wished to do was visit the Outyards. It was an inevitability since the moment he'd been told about them, and Loki knew that resistance would be an exercise in futility. There were worse eventualities than having to spend an extra morning at the bouts, though as he led Thor and Sif on a zig-zagging path around the rings, he couldn't think of one. Eyes turned to them without fail as they passed, the various bouts in progress momentarily forgotten. It had always been that way for Loki, of course, and it had gotten no better since he moved up from the training yards a few seasons previously. The Outyards had more room for spectators, but he was not expected to make appearances as frequently given the more grueling nature of the matches — a trade-off Loki was happy to make.

Thor and Sif paid him rapt attention as he explained the particulars: officiating and rules and rankings. There was no equivalent in Asgard. They sparred amongst themselves constantly, but only individuals kept track, and only if they wished. They marched off to war to hone their skills to a fine edge; the Jötnar, as ever, used what was available to them. Thor looked ready to jump into the nearest ring head first and begin a bid to achieve first rank in the relatively limited time he had on Jötunheimr. Sif was more restrained, but her face was radiant with interest, bright as a star in the center of the furry hood of her borrowed cloak.

Loki herded them towards an unused ring so that they could commence to beating each other about the head as they were so often compelled to do. Skadi intercepted them a few yards away from one of the smaller rings that Loki usually favored.

"Good greetings, my prince," she said, bowing with a flourish. Ivarr tailed her, close by. She spoke in — very poor — Æsir and though the way she looked at them was still keenly searching, there wasn't the viciousness that sometimes worked its way into Skadi's smile. She was investigating, which Loki far preferred to instigating.

"Skadi, Ivarr," Loki acknowledged. At this, they both nodded towards Thor and Sif.

"Lady Sif, Prince Thor," Skadi said. Then she returned her attention to Loki. "Will you have a match?"

"My companions do so love to beat on each other," Loki said.

Skadi scoffed. "No no no, that is dull. They can do that all the time. Ivarr came for a match. Let the prince face him." She turned to Ivarr and spoke to him in Jötnar, as he did not speak Æsir at all: "Will you face the Æsir prince? He wishes for a bout."

Ivarr shrugged.

"I see no reason why not," he said and Loki felt slightly better at his casual response. Ivarr was a straightforward fellow with simple interests. He liked hunting and he liked Skadi and he wasn't given to deception. If Skadi was planning some mischief, it was unlikely she would make an accomplice of Ivarr for no other reason than he just wasn't very good at it. That had always been Loki's role and, clearly, he would be of no help this time.

"Ivarr agrees," Skadi announced, but when Thor, grinning, moved to step forward and climb down into the ring, Sif grabbed his arm.

"No, I'll go first," she declared. Thor opened his mouth to object, but Sif fixed him with a look of such intensity that Thor actually flinched. He relented, whatever unspoken agreement that had passed between them convincing enough to allow Sif's boldness. He felt the hours and weeks and years that Sif and Thor spent in constant companionship without him acutely.

Sif pulled down her hood, then unclapsed her cloak and handed it to Thor who wordlessly passed it to Loki. It was still warm from the heat of her body. She bounced on her toes once, twice, then again, both limbering and warming, her ponytail swishing back and forth along her back and shoulders.

"No armor, please," Loki commanded Ivarr, who nodded. Skadi only pursed her lips dubiously.

Sif climbed down into the ring, a wide recess into the ground surrounded by rows of curved benches. Ivarr hopped down opposite her. He was svelte by Jötnar reckoning, lean and whiplike, which left him still about twice Sif's size. Loki did not worry for her. She had spent her entire life fighting men larger than her; if the proportion had changed, her fierce determination had not. He worried more about the crowd that was slowly beginning to trickle over, seeing the young Æsir woman in the ring. They were eerily quiet.

"What did you tell him?" Thor asked as he and Loki took seats next to Skadi.

"Not to use his armor charm."

Thor shook his head in staid disapproval.

"Be sure not to tell Sif that."

Loki folded the cloak over his lap.

"It's harmless to other Jötnar, but it would freeze her to the bone at the slightest contact, which would not be especially conducive to a friendly match," Loki said, though he did keep his voice low. "I was going to tell him the same if it were you."

"Aye," Thor acknowledged easily, "and Sif would likely have told you to keep it from me as well."

Loki rolled his eyes.

"Do you ever tire of being so thick-headed?"

Thor only grinned at this and then bumped his elbow into Loki, making a shushing sound.

"They're starting!"

Sif's shield was on her arm and her glaive extended in her hand. Loki could feel the enchantments on it humming their power even at a distance. Across from her, Ivarr had shaped himself a mace. He bowed to Sif, as was customary, and she followed suit. Then, at Skadi's delighted bellow, they attacked.

A thundering crack sounded each time Sif batted away one of Ivarr's mace swings with her shield, but nothing of how it must have pained her shield arm showed on her face. Her glaive was a blur as she twirled it expertly, leaving Ivarr to dodge out of the way of its blades. It was a long enough weapon that it recovered some of the significant difference in their reach for Sif. Ivarr struggled to adapt to an opponent so much quicker than he, one whom he still could not strike without putting himself in the way of her attack.

Much like Loki, Ivarr was a distance fighter at heart. There were few better bowmen, but in close quarters he had always relied on his ability to strike quickly and pull back. Sif's glaive was a viper at his heels, allowing him no rest and no retreat. Ivarr's footwork faltered, just once, but it was all Sif needed. He weaved dangerously to one side and Sif swept his feet out from under him with a grunt. He landed hard on his back and before he had a chance to recover, Sif's heel was on the wrist of the hand that held his mace, and one end of her glaive was at his throat.

Thor yelled his approval. The crowd was, briefly, at a loss. Sif backed away, then bowed low at the waist before Ivarr. When she stood straight again, she offered him her hand.

It was wrong. She was not meant to bow until he was already standing again and ready to return the gesture. Ivarr looked at her, blinking, then took her hand anyway. She helped pull him to his feet. Scattered, polite applause broke from the crowd, but it could barely be heard over the rapid, muttered conversations.

"She is not what I expected," Skadi said. At his other side, Thor was still cheering.

"I've found that very few things turn out how one expects," Loki replied.

Skadi's smile was tight, but when she dropped into the ring to go to Ivarr, she granted Sif a respectful inclination of her head as she passed. Sif's smile was not at all restrained. She walked to the edge of the ring to climb out, but Thor reached down to her, and when she grasped his arm, he hauled her out and into a hug. The crowd still spoke of the bout. Loki watched, Sif's cloak folded in his arms, as Thor spun her about once, like a dance, before setting her on her feet. She turned then to Loki, so radiant, bright. He averted his eyes.

"Well done," he said, looking down at her cloak as he unfolded it, then held it out to drape upon her. Sif ignored the cloak entirely, but stepped more closely into the circle of Loki's arms, the hazel of her eyes boring into his.

"I'll do even better against you, I think," she said, face still flushed with the joy of battle. "Fight me."

"With a promise like that, why should I?" Loki asked haughtily as he set the cloak on her shoulders. Sif curled her fingers in the collar of his tunic, and absent any other recourse, he leaned closer to her.

"Because I asked," Sif said around a feral grin. A barely restrained exclamation of indignation rang out and the crowd chatter filtered back into Loki's consciousness, overwhelmed as it had been by Sif. Now, they had ceased discussing the bout. Loki stepped back from Sif as if burned, but studiously kept his gaze on her, if only to avoid seeing all the eyes that he knew were upon them.

"You confuse a request with a demand, my lady," Loki said; it dropped with a clunk from his tongue, stiff and awkward. Sif looked at him, her confusion plain. The crowd's whispered conversation was only an incomprehensible din to her.

Surprise would be foolish and Loki tried his best never to be so. It was not a surprise. He had always known, from that first day when he realized what he felt. He'd gone as far as to think it an impossibility: to stand Sif before his people, an Æsir woman, and let them see what he held inside of him. It had been a moot point then, when he had no hope of reciprocation, but as that hope kindled in him, he pushed other thoughts away.

Now it all bore down upon him. He had been the subject of intense scrutiny his entire life. So too Sif. The thought of them both suffering yet more seemed suddenly unthinkable.

"Loki?" she prodded. He fixed the clasp on her cloak. The word "disgusting," a ferocious whisper, carried to his ears.

"We should go," he said, then turned to Thor as he came forth and put a thick arm on Sif's shoulders. Thor who, even on Jötunheimr it seemed, did things with an ease that was never allowed Loki.

"Leave?" Thor asked, aghast. "What of my bout?"

"Some other time," Loki said, swiftly. "It's become crowded and we should not monopolize the ring. These are for ranked fights after all."

Thor looked as if he might protest, but the desperation that Loki'd allowed to leak into his gaze stopped him. Loki doubted Thor had any idea why Loki wanted so much to leave, but just the fact that he did was clearly enough for Thor. Loki had known it would be. Thor was nothing if not consistent in both his worst qualities and his best.

"Right then," Thor said with a heavy sigh, "lead on."

They bid farewell to Skadi and Ivarr. Skadi's eyes narrowed at them, but she made no comment. Loki doubted that would be the case later on if she should catch him alone.

They made haste towards the enclosure where the sleds were kept. Loki gave quick instructions to a nearby attendant, and they waited as he prepared.

"Where are we going exactly?" Thor asked, peering beyond the low wall of ice at the darkened caves where the bears made their dens.

"Patience, my friend," Loki replied, with great serenity. While he would have liked to have better reason for leaving the Outyards, there was a certain satisfaction to getting to do what he'd planned in the first place.

"Better to ask a dog not to bark," Sif said, snorting.

Magnanimously, Thor ignored this, but for the gout of snow that he sent flying Sif's way. She dodged behind Loki, her hands on his shoulders.

"Oh, thank you so much," he said, though the snow had missed him as well. Sif's breath was hot on his nape. Loki turned his head to one side to look at her askance — a flash of pitch black hair and square jaw. One of her fingers, resting still on his shoulder, twitched up and brushed his chin. When she spoke he could feel her breath on his cheek.

"You _are _immune to the cold as you've been so eager to be smug about," Sif said.

"Not immune, resistant," Loki corrected, "and I'm neither to being wet from melted snow on my clothing."

"Well, I beg your pardon, Your Highness," Sif declared drily.

"I'll consider it." She wound a finger in the back of his hair and yanked sharply, which, as far as punishments went, Loki found surprisingly pleasant. Further retaliation was suspended as the attendant returned with their sled.

Thor and Sif climbed into the back and shuffled under the furs with the ease of old experts, and Loki climbed up onto the lip and picked up the reins.

"You're going to leave me back here with only Thor for company?" Sif called, and when Loki looked back they were already engaged in the opening strains of a fierce battle beneath the furs. Loki focused his attention ahead.

"Alas," he managed, "we all have our burdens to bear."

Loki was no expert with sleds as they were rarely used for any task but transporting supplies and the like, but there had been enough clandestine joyrides on dull nights for him to be proficient.

They set off with good speed, bursting out of Gastropnir and onto the tundra. The glint off the snow was blindingly bright in the daytime, though Loki's eyes naturally adjusted for it. One of the many things that had been mentioned to Thor and Sif during the previous evening's conversation was not to stare at it. They cut through Utgarde, leaving Loki to wonder if he would ever be able to pass through the old city again without keenly remembering the heat of Sif's hand in his. He turned east halfway to the Bifröst site and they rode out again into the tundra. Jarnvid loomed and as they got nearer, Loki heard Sif's voice over the rushing wind.

"Does someone live all the way out here?" she yelled and Loki realized that her sharp eyes had caught Thjazi's cabin in the distance.

"Skadi's father!" Loki yelled back, though he had no idea whether Sif heard him.

The man himself appeared then, still a speck in the distance, out at the front of his home. He was bending over something. Tanning hides, Loki surmised, knowing where the rack was situated. He had gone with Skadi to hunt for Thjazi weeks ago. It was not an uncommon occurrence. On such occasions, without the others about, Skadi worked quickly and did not expect much of Loki but his company. Thjazi had not wanted to see them, Loki especially, when they returned, however — one of his moods thick upon him. Skadi would not admit that she had told him of the Æsir visiting, but Loki knew that must be it.

Going right by the cabin was more direct, but Loki brought them about anyway, taking a circular route to avoid passing close. No use upsetting the old man, who would certainly see the flash of blond hair and pale skin flying by. Still, as Loki steered them out of line of the cabin, the hairs on the back of his neck pricked and would not stop for some time.

They arrived at their destination with the clouds still bright from the sun behind them. Loki stopped the sled and jumped down, staring out over the vista as he waited for Thor and Sif to join him.

"It's a sheet of ice," Thor said dully, once they had.

Loki wondered why he even bothered sometimes.

"This is Údáinsakr," Loki said, "and that 'sheet of ice' is Glæsisvellir."

"Ah," said Thor, "it's a sheet of ice with a name."

Sif elbowed him.

"It was thought," Loki continued indefatigably, "long, long ago that the Deathless Acre and its Glittering Plains held the secrets of time itself. Nothing that came here ever aged or changed in any way."

Sif's expression was one of polite interest. Thor was barely making the attempt.

"Now, that magic, to affect other things — if it existed — is long gone, but the Plains are still here, utterly immutable. The ice never melts, shifts, cracks, chips, nothing."

"Immutable?" Sif asked, raising an eyebrow. She looked out over the perfectly smooth expanse of crystalline ice disappearing into the horizon. Then she pulled out her glaive and struck the blade down at her feet.

The ice gleamed. Not so much as the tip of the weapon had penetrated it. Sif stared down, brow furrowing, and even Thor perked up. Sif tried again, sweeping the edge of the blade across the ice in an arc. It slid smoothly, but there was no indication of its passing but a disappearing trail of glinting lights, like stars sparkling, caught in stasis beneath the depths.

Not to be outdone, Thor stepped forward and unlatched Mjölnir from his belt. He hefted it and Loki and Sif both watched as he slammed it down on the ice. Lights rippled outward from where it had struck, then dissipated. The ice was unmarked. Loki smiled.

Satisfied, he turned back to the sled and rummaged on the floor at the front. First, he pulled out a leather sack lined with waxy paper and emptied it in front of the bear. She plopped down onto her bottom to enjoy her slimy feast of fish, and Loki undid her harness. Then, he returned and pulled out another bag.

"Put these on," he commanded and Sif and Thor turned from their consideration of the ice. Loki had put two pairs of sturdy, shining blades set in flat, polished, wooden fixtures before them. Sif and Thor watched Loki as he demonstrated strapping them to the bottoms of his boots with their leather buckles.

"While I applaud the ingenuity," Thor said, "this seems a very inefficient place to put a weapon."

"Not everything is meant for killing, Thor," Loki said, patting Thor's shoulder companionably as he passed him. He stepped carefully onto the ice, hoping that he would not be so out of practice as to embarrass himself. It had been a while since Loki had been skating. It was usually saved for the early summer evenings, and he had not been in Jötunheimr then for a while. Thankfully, however, his skill had not abandoned him.

He glided in an easy circle and Sif had seen enough. She finished strapping herself in and stood up, legs as wobbly as a newborn fawn, then stepped onto the ice. She slid forward just a bit with her momentum, unsteady lines glimmering in the ice beneath her as she passed, then her arms began to wheel about as she lost her balance.

Loki moved forward and caught her against his chest, then helped her upright, his hands clutching her forearms. He smiled down at her.

"Your grace really does abandon you on all occasions but battle, doesn't it?" he asked.

Sif scowled, though it did not stop her from shuffling even closer to him, her hands grasping at his tunic.

"If you let me fall, I will kill you." Her teeth flashed, straight and white. The lights from the ice reflected in her eyes.

"Then, I suppose I'd best not let you fall," Loki said.

"Are you coming, Thor?" Sif called and, tentatively, as if even that much movement would see her crash to the ice, she held out a hand in his direction.

Thor had made it to his feet and made it to the ice, but there he merely stood, slightly hunched over and immobile.

"Do you need some help?" Loki asked brightly.

"No," Thor huffed, "I can manage." As proof, he slid forward with one foot, then the other, then promptly fell flat on his back.

Sif guffawed into Loki's collarbone.

"This is the stupidest amusement I have ever heard of," Thor declared from the ground.

"Says the fellow who likes having his brains bashed out to pass the time," Loki replied.

Thor grumbled a string of curses as he got back to his feet and made it a bit further before he slipped and fell again. He persisted in refusing help, the furrow of his brow betraying that Thor had silently declared war on the ice itself and would not relent until he alone had proven himself its master.

Loki could not profess to be especially disappointed, as that left him to tend to Sif. She clung close and initially resisted even being pulled along by her hands. Loki pondered aloud the stories that would be told of the great warrior Sif who was defeated by a patch of ice, and she agreed, with a growl that went up and down his spine, to let him teach her to spin.

He did teach her, and they rotated in slow circles, their hands entwined.

"Turn your feet out more," he chided her when her gliding stuttered.

"Are you always this nagging a teacher?" She chewed her lower lip as she attempted to rearrange the position of her feet.

"Only when I've a difficult student," Loki retorted. Their spin picked up speed. "But not impossible," he continued. "Perhaps someday I'll even teach you to dance."

Sif pinched him.

They progressed from there to Sif going short distances entirely without assistance, though she demanded that he not stray far as she made her attempts. So Loki shadowed her, his hand only just brushing the small of her back. Nearby, Thor had mastered the art of forward motion, though he had achieved it through an odd, half-crouched position.

"You look like you're taking a shit!" Sif called to him, alight with victory as she skated forward into Loki's arms under her own power. Thor's rather vulgar response was swallowed by a yelp as he fell to his hands and knees upon attempting to straighten up.

Loki wanted to take Sif further along the Plains, to where glimmering patterns that did not fade away were set into the ice. She agreed, though her face was beginning to go rosy from the cold, and held onto the back of his belt as he pulled them along. When he picked up speed, however, she wrapped her arms around his waist instead, her cheek pressed between his shoulders. It limited his range of motion, but neither of them complained about the increased travel time. The Outyards and Gastropnir and the judgment they held seemed a lifetime ago; here no one was about to catalogue their differences or to wish for them to be anyone but who they were: Sif and Loki.

"What are they?" Sif asked when they arrived at the center of the Plains. A massive swirling design glowed beneath the ice, countless arms snaking out into the distance.

"Some say they are the paths walked by timeless beings long gone, when Yggdrasill was but a sapling," Loki said, peering over her shoulder, "before they left the Deathless Acre to spread out across all her limbs."

"And what massive, boring books did you read that in?" Sif asked, though there was a gentleness to it that belied her words.

Before Loki could answer, in the distance, thunder cracked suddenly and lightning flashed. Evidently, Thor had tired of skating. Sif clicked her tongue.

"He never ceases playing with that thing," she said. "Though, I will admit it is rather magnificent."

"Of course it is. It's an ancient Svartálfa artifact," Loki said. It came out sharper than he'd meant. "The power is all there in the hammer."

Sif looked at him, her head tilted to one side as storm clouds continued to appear from nowhere at the far end of Glæsisvellir.

"Are you trying to impress me?" Sif asked. She was still very close.

"Whatever would give you that idea?" His face was a mask of perfect innocence.

Sif took his hand, lacing their fingers together.

"It's beautiful here," she said seriously. The air felt thin.

Thunder boomed again and the storm clouds moved ever closer.

"What in all the Nine Realms is he doing?" Sif muttered and a moment later, they both saw it.

The column of clouds wasn't just snaking its way towards them. It was being led by Thor, who was hurtling through the sky, Mjölnir held out before him. They watched, gaping, and once he was nearly overhead, he began to descend. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that he'd miscalculated and was coming in far too quickly. Loki tugged Sif back out of Thor's path as he landed with deafening boom, and then skidded a ways along the ice.

Loki and Sif rushed to him, but as they got nearer they saw that he was uninjured. Indeed, he sat there, wet from the rain he'd caused, roaring with laughter.

"Were you _flying_?" Sif asked, part aghast and part amazed.

"Yes!" Thor declared. "I just worked it out!"

"That wasn't at all obvious," Loki said.

Sif's shock had faded, and now only wide-eyed wonder shined on her face.

Thor got to his feet still in his skates, though even they seemed to trouble him less now.

"This place actually is quite stunning from up there. Would you like to try it?" Thor asked, then held a hand out to Sif. Something vicious and ugly reared up in Loki, the likes of which he had never felt before.

He had not expected to like Thor and the fact that he did had been inexplicable to him for a very long time. Eventually he determined to simply accept it as he had so many other things about the Æsir boy. Loki'd never wanted a brother; he still didn't. But if he had to have one he would have wished for him to be like Thor. In that moment, though, as Thor grinned at Sif, his golden hair sodden and dripping down his face, his aspect no less brilliant for it, Loki hated him. It choked him, like bile in the back of his throat, and Loki wished only to be rid of it — to spew it forth and free himself.

Then Sif said: "Not if that's as well as you can land, no thank you." She was still holding Loki's hand.

"You'll catch your death like that," Loki blurted, guilty about his thoughts, though they could be known to no one but him. "We should go."

"I could never be laid low by such a thing," Thor protested, but it was only for show. His hair was already beginning to go stiff with the cold.

"Do you need us to pull you?" Sif asked, teasing.

"No, and I'll beat you there," Thor said, still smiling. Then he swung his hammer about before casting it upwards and dashing off into the air.

"Show off," Sif said, but it was fond.

They started back, this time with Sif only clinging to the side of Loki's clothing with one hand and moving largely under her own power.

"I hope that idiot didn't ruin your plans," she said as they saw Thor execute an only slightly improved landing near the sled. The bear looked up from its nap with mild interest.

"No, no," Loki said, and then, though he knew not what madness gripped him: "Next time I'll show you something the likes of which you've never seen before."

"Oh, where?" Sif asked.

"We'll travel very far, but I can get us there," Loki said, distracted already by the equations running in his head. He could do it. He had done it before. By himself, of course, but he could accommodate others. The mathematics didn't change but so much. He knew the perfect place, where the space thinned and things could slip through.

"It will have to wait a few nights," he added, "but I assure you, you will not be disappointed."

Sif looked at him, eyebrows raised, her expression open. The tip of her nose was pink. She said no more as they continued towards the sled.


	20. summer's end v

_v._

In the night, Sif woke to knocking. It echoed through her borrowed bedroom and ripped her from hazy dreams. She rose, blinking and bleary-eyed, to find Loki at her door. The knob in his throat worked as he looked at her, and his eyes cast quickly down her body, which was clad in a thin shift, before he politely averted them.

Sif pursed her lips. It had been three days since Loki took them to Glæsisvellir, after which she and Thor had barely seen him. He ate with them and had even given them a few more cursory tours of things of interest: a great, yawning chasm where the prisms of the ice played colorful tricks on the eye, and the natural springs, steam curling up from them in lazy tendrils, hidden deep beneath Gastropnir. But overall he had spent most of his time making preparations for the mysterious journey he'd promised. Through some agreement to which Sif was not privy, it had been Skadi and Ivarr who shepherded Sif and Thor in Loki's absence, which meant spending the majority of their time at the Outyards.

Thor enjoyed it thoroughly. Sif would have more so if she had not found herself in the infuriating position of longing for Loki's company when she had already traveled across the cosmos to be near him. Skadi had seemed distantly sympathetic, though what exactly she knew of Sif and Loki, she always refused to say, and only invited Sif to spar again whenever the topic of Loki's whereabouts was broached. Even when Sif did see him, he was carefully polite for the most part, the very picture of a perfect host and not at all like his oft-waspish, always-vexatious self. Sif could feel the Jötnar's eyes on her at every turn, which only frustrated her more as she had been robbed of the chance to do anything at all to warrant it.

But now, as Loki stood in her door, his measured half-smirk spoke of his normal demeanor: too clever by half and completely aware of it.

"This is a rather rude time to call," Sif said. She kept her face straight and her nose turned up.

"I assure you I shall make amends," Loki said. "It's time I delivered on my promise of a singular journey."

"At this hour?" Sif asked.

Loki turned his lips in towards his teeth.

"A certain amount of discretion is required," he said.

Sif smiled in spite of herself.

"I'll dress."

"I'll get Thor," he replied after only the shortest pause.

He disappeared down the hall, closing the door behind him, and Sif began to pull on her clothing. Loki returned as she was putting on her cloak, a rumpled Thor trailing behind him. In the hall outside of her room, Loki wrapped the cool blanket of his magic around them, and they dashed off through the corridors.

Sif found it strange to look at herself wreathed in shadow. She could see only the faint, flickering impression of her own body, limned in a subtle green glow. They made it out of the keep without incident, and Loki led them to the far wall, where a sled already waited. Thor hunkered down under the furs immediately. He was an even heavier sleeper than he was an early riser. Sif was curious about what lengths Loki had gone to in order to rouse him even this long; sorcery had to have been involved.

"Wake me when we've arrived… wherever it is," Thor mumbled and promptly dropped off.

Jötunheimr's landscape was eerie in the night, the endless plains of snow and ice taking on a ghostly glow. It was hard to make out anything, but Loki had no trouble navigating. He took them once again through the ruined city and then turned in the direction of the little cabin they'd passed the last time. They went closer this time as it sat, dark and quiet, then they veered towards the forest. The Iron-Wood it was called, and in its depths lived bands of trolls. Sif wondered if Loki intended to find them a battle, but immediately dismissed the thought. That was not something Loki would find at all entertaining, and there had not been any reason — as far as she knew — to move against them.

He steered the sled alongside the forest for long enough that Sif began to doze off as well, until the sled bumping over a cluster of exposed roots shook her awake. Thor was still snoring beside her. Loki had turned into the forest now, and the impossibly tall trees engulfed them. But the foliage was growing thicker by the moment and the sled would not be able to pass through for much longer. Loki stopped the sled just when Sif began to worry that overreaching branches might pluck one of them out as they passed.

Loki jumped down from his seat and began tending to the bear as Sif stood and stretched, yanking the fur half off of Thor, who barely stirred.

"We'll have to go the rest of the way on foot," Loki said as Sif approached them.

He'd fed the bear, but not freed it from the harness that attached it to the sled. Sif moved a small bit closer; the giant snowy bears had seemed perfectly pleasant the entire time she'd been in Jötunheimr, but something in her still could not think of them as domesticated.

"Will it wait?" she asked.

"No, she knows how to get to Gastropnir by herself," Loki responded.

"And I suppose we'll have Thor fly _us_ back?" Sif scoffed.

"We'll walk. The way back is much shorter," Loki said as if that made any sense at all.

"Thor!" he called out then, to little effect. Sif rolled her eyes. Then, a pile of snow was quite suddenly dislodged from a branch above the sled and fell right onto Thor's head. He leapt to his feet in alarm.

"We've arrived," Loki said pleasantly as Sif laughed, "or nearly."

Thor shook out his hair, resembling nothing so much as a dog, sending a shower of the snow spattering his head and shoulders towards them.

"How delightful," Loki said, brushing the flakes from his curls.

"You started it," Thor protested.

"I didn't lay a hand on you!" Loki declared.

"I'm going to lay a fist on you if you don't hurry and lead the way," Sif said.

"Ah, Sif, you know I can deny you nothing when you persist in being so very charming."

Sif swung at him, but in his dodging, Loki did begin to move forward. He took them on a winding path through the trees. In the distance, Sif could hear running water, so it was no surprise when soon, they came upon a river.

"Is our destination beyond the river?" Thor asked, eyeing the rushing water.

"After a fashion," said Loki, noncommittally. "We must cross here."

"What?" Sif exclaimed. It was not an excessively wide river, but the current was swift and she didn't even want to consider how cold the water must be. "Have you something against bridges?"

"Not at all, but a bridge doesn't suit our purposes. We need to take to Ifingr's waters."

Sif looked to Thor, who seemed equally dubious, but Loki was implacable. He raised his hands towards them and the green glow, steadily more familiar, flashed at the corners of her eyes like a corona.

"There, the wet won't touch you," Loki said, "but we must go this way. You have to trust me."

Sif sighed and followed him as he stepped to the river bank.

"Clasp hands," Loki instructed, so Sif took his hand in one and Thor's hand in the other. Then, Loki led them out into the water.

Loki had not been false about his spell. As they began to slosh through the shallows, Sif's boots were bone dry whenever she lifted them from the water to take another step. They went further still and the water lapped against her hips, her waist, but when it waned, it was if it had never been. She could feel the water pushing, the pressure of it around her, and, unfortunately, the bite of its cold, but it was as if a second skin kept it from actually touching her.

Further out, nearly to the middle, the current began to pull at them. Loki still forged ahead, his steps firm and, behind her, Thor strained to keep his balance. Both of their hands were vise tight around Sif's, if not for which fact the current likely would have dragged her off. As it was, it was a struggle to stand. She had nearly gone to her knees when she saw Loki muttering under his breath; she didn't know what he was saying, and she wasn't sure if it was due to the roar of the rushing water or to the language he was speaking. His magic flared so bright and strong that even she, who was largely numb to such things, could feel it vibrating through her teeth. They'd reached the middle of the river and Loki stopped walking.

"What is he doing?" Thor yelled.

Sif had little idea, but she couldn't say even that much as the water beat against her, driving her down. She couldn't find proper purchase with her feet, and slipped again. Thor pulled at her arm as he saw her falling, but it wasn't enough to keep her head above the water. It was so cold that she was nearly dizzy from the shock of it, and she hadn't taken a breath before being submerged. The pulsing of Loki's magic in her skull had become almost unbearably intense and it fogged her thoughts as she attempted, uselessly, to find her feet again. The water still rushed at her, blocking out all other sensation, and Sif closed her eyes.

When she opened them, she was kneeling on a patch of grass under a late afternoon sun. Thor stood over her, completely bewildered. Beside her, Loki knelt as well, his head hanging low as he breathed heavily, exhausted. All around them, the grass rolled on, across hills and few rocky formations here and there. It was a little chilly, but absolutely nothing like the weather had just been. Patches of wildflowers sprung up, bright, here and there.

"How- where-" Thor began.

"Welcome to Midgard," Loki said, lifting his head and taking another deep breath.

It seemed impossible, but all the same Sif knew it must be true. Certainly, there was no place on Jötunheimr like this; everything about it was wrong, from the foliage to the smells to the time of day. And the spell he had cast in the middle of the river, so strong that even Sif could feel it- The only sorcery to which she'd ever had any sensitivity at all was her brother's: the power that cut through the cosmos and carried whomever he wished along Yggdrasill's limbs. There were other ways; there had been other artifacts than the Bifröst that could be bent to that purpose, though none was so suited for it as the rainbow bridge. But civilizations rose and fell on the backs of such devices.

For Loki, one person, to do that entirely under his own power was like nothing she'd ever heard.

"Loki," Thor effused, "you are brilliant!"

Sif felt it an extreme understatement. Loki smiled, wan, and Sif put a hand on his shoulder.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"I'm fine," he said, and indeed he did already look much better than he had even moments before. "I've never taken anyone else with me before," he said as he stood and then gave Sif his hand to pull her up as well.

Her amazement must have still been plain on her face because Loki looked at her, then spoke again, serious and proud: "There are many paths through the realms, some obvious, some far less so, and some not even known to people like your Heimdall."

"Can you go anywhere you wish?" Sif heard herself ask.

"No, not anywhere," Loki responded carefully, though the look in his eyes confirmed what she'd wished to know.

Thor, so rarely interested in the whys and wherefores of anything, had already tired of explanations and was looking out across the landscape eagerly.

"I see something, off in the distance," he announced.

Loki followed his gaze.

"There's a mortal village over that way," Loki said. "We'll wait until nightfall if you want to look around. I didn't expect you'd be interested in such study, though."

"I've no interest in study," Thor confirmed, "but I would like to see what these mortals are like."

"It does seem more direct," Sif agreed.

No one had visited Midgard since the last war. There was said to be little reason for it. Given the dearth of information, Sif could admit to a certain degree of curiosity. But when she looked to Loki, his face had gone stony, his aspect almost weary, in such sharp contrast to the barely restrained triumph that had been on him moments before.

Sif realized their mistake — and by his swiftly changing expression, so did Thor — the moment before Loki said it.

"I'm afraid I've never found myself welcome without cover of shadow," Loki said, baring his teeth mirthlessly.

No visitors since the last war, when the Jötnar had fallen on the mortals without quarter, until their cries reached Asgard. It had been so long since Sif had thought of them that way — of Loki that way. But these people would not see him as she did.

"I'm sure there are many other amuse-" Thor began, but Loki cut him off.

"No, it's no bother," Loki said. "There are other options."

He did not look at Sif as he passed her to stand in front of Thor, then reached and took hold of the other boy's chin. Thor looked confused as Loki turned his head left then right, eyes appraising, before releasing him and backing away. Loki closed his eyes and made a sharp gesture with his left hand. Then, he changed.

It spread over him like a rippling wave: his luminous blue skin went pale, his adornments faded into nothing, leaving unmarked pink flesh in their wake, and the color drained from his hair until it spoke of sunlight instead of the starless midnight sky. When Loki opened his eyes, they showed blue-green on white.

"What do you think?" he asked, spreading his hands out in front him. His palms were rosy. His smile was a dagger. "Am I much improved?"

"Loki," Sif said, though she did not know how to continue. It didn't matter.

"Come along," Loki said, taking long strides towards the village, "we should hurry before it gets dark."

Sif followed. The village was near enough that they made it to its entrance — such as it was — before the sun began to set. It was really only a wooden arch with walls on either side that did not run the length of the village and, indeed, must only have been for the purpose of housing lookouts. A handful of tow-headed men did come out to them, battered swords at the ready. The weapons looked to be made of poorly tempered iron. Sif was fairly certain she could break one in her hands, to say nothing of the ruddy, little men themselves, not one of whom was even as tall as she was.

One of the men yelled out something, but it was strange to Sif's ear. The cadence and phrasing made it seem like something she should be able to understand, but she could only mark out similarities to words she knew, not actual matches. Loki stepped forward, hands folded in front of him.

He said something back to them and the man barked out what must have been a warning. Loki did not move, but one of the others, young and far too eager, rushed forward to put his sword to Loki's throat. This was enough for Sif and, it turned out, for Thor. She drew her glaive, its two blades launching out as she spun it, its handle lengthening, and just beside her, Thor hefted Mjölnir.

The men looked frightened and confused as Sif armed herself, but froze, petrified, as Thor raised his hammer and called the storm. The skies darkened immediately and thunder rumbled, deafening. A flash of lightning struck the hammer and Thor's eyes flashed briefly with white hot light.

"Lower your weapons!" Thor commanded, voice booming.

Sif wasn't sure if they'd understood his words at all, but they dropped their weapons entirely as an awestruck crowd began to gather, then fell to their knees, prostrate in the dirt.

Loki's newly blond curls were darkening with the rain Thor had caused, and he looked at Thor with familiar exasperation.

"They speak a very basic, highly corrupted form of your language," Loki explained. "I was going to talk them down, but this works too, I suppose."

"Clearly it does," Thor agreed and lowered Mjölnir. Immediately, the sky cleared.

An older man with long white hair and a long white beard came forth then. Sif supposed he was the leader of the village or some manner of elder. Perhaps both. Their jabbering re-contexualized by what Loki had said of their language, Sif thought she could make out scattered words like "peace," "offering," and "worship."

Loki responded amicably and Sif heard him say hers, Thor's, and his own name. The elder said something too quick for Sif to catch as he gestured in her direction. Loki's brow furrowed, then he grinned in a way that Sif had come to know well — wide and brutal and not reaching his eyes. He said something with great feeling. Some manner of agreement, as Sif could work out "yes" and "joyous" or perhaps "happy."

The elder began to wave others over and give them quick instructions as Loki returned to Sif and Thor.

"Do they welcome us?" Thor asked.

"Oh, absolutely," Loki said, smoothly. "They extend their most effusive welcome to the warrior queen, the lord of thunder, and his brother.

"That's me," he added. Thor seemed to find this amusing, but Sif still did not like the look of Loki's smile, as if it was splintering at the ends. "Their chieftain has ordered a feast in celebration of our coming, to begin at sunset."

"Then, we've time to look around!" Thor said and ushered them into the village.

They were immediately set upon by the villagers who smiled and bowed and curtsied ceaselessly before them. Some of the men seemed to be trying to communicate something to Thor about Mjölnir as Loki hovered nearby, and Sif was herded away by a gaggle of young women.

She could make out a few words that she thought were complimenting her looks, but it wasn't until one of the girls helpfully held up a strand of her hair and pointed to it that Sif understood. Weighing her options, Sif submitted to their ministrations. There were enough of them that the process of fiddling with and braiding and weaving endless fresh cut golden flowers into her hair went relatively quickly. They turned then to attempting to apply some manner of cosmetic that smelled so awful that Sif staunchly declined without hesitation. After that, they began to parade various frocks before her, which she might have been more amenable to had she thought any of them would come past her knees.

Sif escaped just as the sun was setting and found Thor and Loki watching the kindling of a massive bonfire in the middle of the village. Unfortunately, Thor's earlier display had left much of the wood damp, so the villagers were having a hard time of it. Loki called out and the men backed away. Then, he snapped his fingers once and an inferno raged into existence.

Soon after, the elder hurried over to show them to their places. The people had set out a long table and between it and the fire lay a ring, scratched into the dirt and lined with flowers. Behind the table were three high-backed chairs. The elder directed Thor to the one in the center, Loki to his right, and Sif, to his left.

Then, the revelry began. The villagers brought out instruments and played jaunty tunes as young men and women danced in and out and about the ring. Others filled the table with food and drink, though Sif, feeling guilty about the state of the repast — small, meager animals for the meat and sickly vegetables and fruit — ate very little. The mead wasn't distasteful, if abominably weak, though it seemed to have a pronounced effect on the villagers.

When Thor could no longer resist getting up to join the dancing, Sif leaned over to Loki and offered him a goblet. He had been sitting, hands folded, watching the proceedings with hooded eyes for some time.

"You should enjoy yourself," Sif said. "You kept your promise. This is certainly farther than either of us has ever been before."

His smile was still brittle as he plucked a flower from her hair and twirled it between his fingers.

"Oh, I'm having a wonderful time," he purred.

In front of them, one of the girls was bidding Thor bend before her so that she could place a wreath of the same golden flowers threaded through Sif's hair onto his head. Another was beckoning Sif, who shook her head, but the girl was insistent.

"No, no dancing," Sif said, but the girl only smiled and repeated her request, which, really was more like a command, as she urged Sif out of her seat.

"Celebrate" was all Sif could make out. Resigned to her fate, Sif let the girl drag her into the ring. At the very least, the dances were not so intricate as the courtly ones on Asgard. But instead of demonstrating a dance for Sif as they had for Thor, Sif was positioned directly next to Thor in the center of the circle. He shrugged at her as she looked at him curiously. Then, the girls produced a length of ribbon and gestured for Sif's hand. She held it out, but deeply regretted it when they began to wind the ribbon between her hand and Thor's, securing them together.

At this, Thor too began to protest and Sif looked to Loki, still sitting at the table.

"Did I forget to mention?" he called. "They think you're married."

Then, he drained the goblet Sif had given him, got up from the table, and walked off deeper into the village. Sif tore violently at the ribbon as Thor attempted to communicate a correction. It ripped under her fingers and she sprinted after Loki.

"Loki!" she called. He turned a sharp corner at the side of a squat, little house and Sif caught his shoulder.

"What's wrong with you?"

"You didn't like the joke?" he asked, eyebrows raised high. "I thought it was rather funny myself. The best ones always have just a kernel of truth."

His eyes were a stranger's, flashing green in the dim light.

"Shut up," she spat, impatient, as she backed him against the wall of the house. "You're being ridiculous."

"Just a bit of fun, really," he said with a shrug, but she could see panic rising in him.

She had him cornered, though; there was nowhere to run.

"You don't look like you're having fun," Sif said.

"You know me so well," he sneered.

"I do," Sif declared firmly.

He clenched his jaw as she stared at him, a muscle fluttering in his cheek. She could almost hear the door slam, see the curtains drawn.

"Fine," she said, after a long silence, and turned away. Before she could take a step, his hand caught hers. When she looked back, his expression revealed that he hadn't expected to do that. Sif's temper flared.

"You are impossible!" she yelled. "Do you know that?" His jaw was still clenched, the line of his mouth tight, pained. "Every time I think- But I look and you're just… gone."

"You know I prefer to strike from a distance," he said. It came out a rasp, weak and fragile.

"This isn't a fight," Sif said.

"Everything's a fight with you."

"Loki," she sighed, then whispered: "Loki." A plea.

He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. The breath he took was like gasping for air.

"We're very… different," he said at long last.

"No," Sif replied and released his hand to cradle his nape, his face, as he leaned towards her. "We're not."

He wet his lips nervously, they were pale in the scant light, and Sif said: "Wait. No." She saw something in his face crack, but rushed ahead before it had a chance to shatter.

"No, I mean," she continued. "Not like this."

She stroked the smooth plane of his cheek. Her thumb ran, uninterrupted, along his cheekbone. Loki inhaled and exhaled a sigh laced with longing. Color washed through his skin like a flower bursting into bloom. The soft ridges of his adornments pressed against the pads of her thumbs. His eyes glinted red, so red, bright and rich and red and Loki.

Sif pulled his mouth down to hers. His soft, sweet mouth that, when it opened to her tongue, was so very cool. Cool like a brisk breeze in winter, so much needed because Sif burned.

Loki's fingers traced about her waist, up her spine, between her shoulder blades, leaving gooseflesh in their wake, leaving fevered skin. She pressed him back, back into the wall so hard that his shoulders thumped against it. She licked at his teeth and he bit at her lip. Her hand caught, tangled, tugged at his hair. He twisted one of her braids about his hand; the flowers crushed against his palm and the sweet scent filtered to her nose.

Loki pulled back, just slightly, and she could see his mouth, gleaming dark and wet, a slash of indigo in a cerulean sea. He was flushed. She had never seen him flushed before. Sif laughed, rapturous, as he kissed her mouth again, her cheekbones, and the curve of her jaw. He worked there, where her jaw met her neck, with tongue and teeth until her entire body thrummed for it and she pulled him back around to her mouth. They kissed, long and languorous, exploring, learning.

Sif's teeth hummed, still, vibrating from their roots to the base of her skull.

Her eyes shot open, wide and round.

"Oh no," she gasped into Loki's mouth. He looked at her, dazed, but there was no time to explain as she released him and attempted to twist away from his embrace.

She'd barely made it a full step when the Bifröst descended on them.


	21. summer's end vi

_vi._

Since he was a very small child, Loki had prided himself on his composure. Self-control was important as well, of course, but Loki had always found that even when he was at his most frayed, a calm demeanor worked well both for his mental state and, usually, towards whatever it was he was trying to accomplish. Furthermore, though he had encountered a fair number of things that tested his self-control, he had never encountered an occasion during which he could not maintain at least the appearance of poise.

Of course, Loki had never before been caught in the middle of taking the son of Odin on an illicit trip to another realm and subsequently been snatched up to Asgard by their nigh omniscient Gatekeeper whose maiden sister he'd just so happened to be trysting with at the time.

They appeared in Heimdall's observatory in a flash of light and Loki stood, slack-jawed, gaping, and breathing far more heavily than normal. Thor looked caught between irritation and mild embarrassment, and Sif, clever, beautiful, radiant Sif, made a show of stumbling in surprise so as to put just a bit more respectful distance between herself and Loki. Up on the dais, Heimdall stared; beyond it, Odin and Frigg stood. Loki closed his mouth.

His heart was still beating at an abnormal clip and, if he was honest, a good portion of his mental acuity was completely inaccessible, still subsumed in Sif and Sif's hot, wet mouth, and Sif's thick, silky hair, and Sif's lean, strong body. He'd thought before that she consumed him, but this was wholly different. She'd ruled his thoughts, his hopes, his fears, his desires, guilty and otherwise, but now it was matched with a throbbing need that pounded through him and made it near impossible to think about anything else. He wondered if this was how other people felt and, if so, how they ever got anything accomplished.

Sif's hair was mussed, the braids and flowers wild. Her mouth was still flushed and swollen. She sucked her lower lip into her mouth and Loki forced his eyes away. He closed them briefly, grasping for calm. He did not quite achieve it, but when he opened his eyes again, he was sure he looked more the part than he had.

In front of them, Odin was the picture of fury.

"What were you thinking?" he roared as he marched towards them.

"It was nothing, Father," Thor said.

"Nothing?" Odin's eye flashed, his shoulders quaked with his rage. "You disappeared, without warning, without word, in the middle of Jötunheimr! Do you know what you nearly did- what you nearly caused?"

Heimdall stood, still, immobile, but Loki thought he saw his golden eyes flicker to Sif. She stood, her back as straight as her brother's, bearing up under her king's rage. It was not Sif that was being watched, or not only, but Thor. Of course. Loki'd not bothered to think of it before, but it was obvious. They could barter all of Jötunheimr away and still Odin would never afford them his trust. What Odin implied meant that Loki's parents too would be angrier than anticipated. That or they would be pleased that he managed to so vex the Allfather.

"I'm fine!" Thor replied, his anger rising in response to his father's. "And clearly nothing has been done _or_ caused!"

"How did you do it?" Odin asked as if Thor had not spoken. "How was it even possible for you to-"

Thor's brow was furrowing, stubborn, but this wasn't a fight Loki wanted his friend to take up on his behalf.

"I did it," Loki said. Odin turned his gaze on Loki, who did not flinch. "It was my idea and I took them both, Thor and Sif. They didn't even know where we were going until we got there."

At this, Heimdall too looked on Loki and even Frigg appeared startled.

"They trusted me," he added.

"By what method did _you_," a mere boy, a mere jötunn, Loki could not decide which lived in the pause, "manage to achieve this?" Odin asked — demanded.

"The universe is a very big place," Loki said. "There are many methods by which to achieve most things. A wise man never assumes his is the only way."

Odin exhaled heavily, refusing to be baited.

"You have not answered my question," he said.

"My apologies, esteemed Allfather," Loki said, unblinking. "Not being one of your subjects, I was not under the impression that I was beholden to do so."

This time, it was more effective.

"You listen to me-" he began, but Loki was not deterred.

"Am I to understand that you don't wish for me to answer you then?"

Odin stared and Loki took the opening.

"In the interest of friendship and cooperation, I'm choosing to answer you," Loki clarified. "There is a path to Midgard, ancient and tiny, in a particular place in Jötunheimr. I found it some time ago, and I used it. Midgard holds very little of interest, as I'm sure you're well aware, so it was only for my entertainment, which, of course, is why I shared it with my friends."

More questions hung there, about what other paths Loki had walked, could walk, but it was clear to all present that he had no intention of answering those. Before Odin could pose them anyway, Frigg spoke.

"Well, now we know what happened and why," she said. "A youthful indiscretion at best, and certainly far from the worst thing they could have done."

She glided forward and placed a gentle hand on Odin's forearm.

"I think the children should go to the palace and get some sleep, so that they can return to Jötunheimr in the morning."

A look passed between she and Odin at this, but Loki could not decipher it. Whatever it was, Odin turned and walked out of the observatory, and Frigg smiled at Thor, Sif, and Loki before waving them forth to follow her back to the palace.

The servants had clearly rushed to prepare Loki's normal room; it lacked its usual meticulous attention to detail. Loki was unconcerned. He counted out minutes after he'd been left there alone, then folded space about himself and traveled the reduced distance to Sif's bedroom. He stepped into her room out of a shadow near her dressing table. She sat cross-legged on her bed, elbow on her knee and chin on her palm. Loki wasn't certain whether she was waiting for him to come to her or waiting for the path to clear so that she could go to him, but as soon as she saw him, it didn't matter.

She darted up from the bed and into him, her kiss fierce and hot. He returned it, his blood racing at the way she sucked at his tongue, his hands resting at the curve of her waist. She broke away with a pleased, little noise. He'd never thought Sif capable of making such a noise, but now he felt like he might need it to survive.

She laced her fingers together at his nape, smiling up at him. He toyed with her hair, where she'd begun to unravel one of the braids.

"This isn't exactly how I planned," Loki said, "but I find I have few complaints."

"You had plans?" Sif asked, grinning, and he could already see the teasing light in her eyes.

"Numerous," Loki admitted.

"Given how poorly you'd been doing, they must have been terrible."

His eyes slipped shut as she ran her fingernails lightly along his hairline at the back of his neck.

"No," he said. "I think they would have resolved themselves in much the same way."

Her fingers stopped, and when he opened his eyes, her expression was serious.

"And how has it resolved itself?" she asked, and he saw on her face what he knew as well: beyond the circle of their embrace, absolutely nothing was resolved at all.

"If you feel," Loki began, and even now, the words were still so hard, "the same way that I feel, then we will find a solution."

Her eyes were wide and warm, so warm, like every other part of her.

"And how is that you feel, exactly," she asked, her mouth bowing only just, "so that I can be certain?"

"You're very full of questions all of a sudden," Loki groused, reaching into his pocket. Then he gently unwound her arms from about him and pressed what he had taken into her palm.

She stared down at it — the little pearl in its silver fixture — uncomprehending, then realization dawned on her face.

"This is my button," she said, "the button from my red jacket. The one I wore-" Her eyes narrowed.

"You stole my button?" she asked, incredulous and frighteningly delighted.

"I didn't steal it," Loki protested. "It came off on its own and I picked it up so that it wouldn't be lost."

"And then you kept it. For years." Her smile could outshine both of Asgard's suns. "Did you hold it and quietly stroke it at night? Whisper poetry to it?"

"You kept the wreath I gave you!" Loki said, though he was more flustered by the look on her face and the lilt in her voice than her accusations.

"Because you gave it to me," she countered easily. "I didn't break into your room and steal it."

"Neither did I," he said.

"That time," Sif said.

"You're making it very difficult for me to remember why I'm so fond of you."

She moved closer, resting her forearms on his shoulders.

"But you do remember," Sif said, confident.

"Yes," he confessed. She kissed him, a response and a promise.

"No one has to know," Loki said then, imbuing his tone with all the elegance of a simple solution. Not so simple, but more so than any other.

"Do you honestly think that will work?" He couldn't tell whether she more wanted him to say yes or no.

"I'm a very good liar," he said instead.

"Not to me," Sif said.

"Not to you," Loki agreed.

They kissed again, and Loki marveled at it, at how quickly it was becoming familiar, the way she moved, pressed into him, how he bent, was drawn, into her. Familiar, but no less world-shaking.

"Would you like a better token?" she asked, lips at his chin. It was soft and utterly sincere.

Loki's response matched it. His fingers glided across the sharp angles of her face, dipped into the hollow of her cheek. He tucked a kiss away, just by her temple.

"I don't need one anymore."


End file.
